Ellonlef abruptly halted that line of thought. The man before her, while he might have commendable attributes, was a mercenary. As well, he was also a man with too much pride by half in his own abilities and opinion-this her training as a Sister of Najihar told her.
She glanced away from him to take in the surroundings, but could see no farther than a hundred paces in any direction. Beyond that, a choking fog of smoke and dust blocked all sight.
“What is it?” she asked, her tone cool.
He seemed taken aback.
As well he should be, she thought. She had lived and thrived in this inhospitable land nearly a decade, alone amongst strangers. She was more than capable of seeing to herself. And besides, she had a husband promised to her already-
Again, Ellonlef cleaved her random thoughts, though not without some measure of bemusement. Here the world was coming apart, and her mind was contemplating promised husbands and the beauty of a mercenary’s ice-blue eyes.
It was shock, of course, she reasoned, that was clouding her wits.
“One of my men is dying,” Kian said, matching her tone. “It would be well if you could comfort him … before the end.” He took pains to hide his emotions, but she could tell that he held a deep commitment for those under his command.
“Help me up,” she ordered, and Kian obliged.
As she strode along at his side, she demanded, “Why did you not send for me straight away?”
He looked askance at her. There was a deep cut across his brow, and a fan of blood and dirt had dried down one side of his face. When he spoke, it was obvious he was striving to remain civil. “As Hazad and I just managed to get you free, and since we did not know if you were hale or dead at the time, it seemed premature to ask anything from you.”
Ellonlef ignored the rude edge in his voice. When she saw the screaming Asra a’Shah, she raced forward.
“Get me hot water and bandages,” she said, staring at the Geldainian’s mangled leg. “As well, wine and swatarin.”
She eased herself down, unconsciously preparing for the pain in her knee-a pain that never came. She did not have time to think on it. “Azuri, hold him down.”
The Izutarian obliged without a word. With deft hands, she pushed up the hem of the injured Geldainian’s saffron robes. Something, a large stone presumably, had nearly smashed the man’s leg off below the knee, and blood was pouring from the wound. Acting quickly, she unbuckled the leather belt that held the sheathed scimitar to his back. The weapon she set aside, but she wrapped the belt around his leg and cinched it tight. As soon as the pressure began to mount, the mercenary started thrashing and yelling. Ignoring this, she pulled harder, until the blood rapidly pooling in the sand under his knee became a weeping trickle. Next, she wrapped the loose end of the belt around his mangled leg several times, and tied it off. With the bleeding staunched, the man flopped back, panting hard, his black skin ashen.
Ellonlef noticed that Kian had not moved. “Is it beneath you to fetch and carry?”
He eyed her, jaw flexing. “We have jagdah, some water, and little else.”
Kian glanced at the Geldainian, and his expression of tightly reined anger became one of deep regret. He handed over his waterskin and a soiled rag pulled from a pocket. It was the tunic she had used earlier to dry herself.
“Do what you will,” he said, “but this man will soon be dead.”
Ellonlef thought she was going to be sick. Never had she seen such heartlessness. He might be ready to give up, but she was not.
“Start a fire,” she commanded. “After I remove what cannot be saved, I will use flame to seal the wound.”
She drew her dagger and leaned over the ruined appendage. Very little meat and sinew attached the leg to the man. Before she could make the first cut, the mercenary began shaking and his breath came quick and frantic. And then he went still. A bit of ash drifted down, landing in one of his glazed eyes. He never blinked.
Kneeling at the man’s head, Azuri said, “He is gone.”
A moment later, the sound of Kian’s boots crunching away told her he was leaving. She almost called him back, but decided she did not want him near. He was a brutish man, born of a brutish land, and could be nothing more.
What else would you have him be? a small voice asked in the recess of her mind. Surely he is nothing to you, save a tool to be used against Varis.
She pointedly ignored that voice.
After a time, Azuri left to help find other survivors. Ellonlef sat with the deceased Geldainian, her eyes brimming with unshed tears, listening to the preternatural quiet that had fallen over the world. It was all too easy to imagine that the end had come. Yet, somehow, she was alive. This despite knowing she had died. This idea startled her, but she remembered all too well the blow to her head, the sensation of being crushed, and feeling the press of a darkness that had nothing to do with the light of the world, but rather the empty blackness of death.
She stretched out her hurt leg, but there was no pain. Despite the lack of hurts, relatively fresh blood covered her robes and exposed skin in large splotches. She blinked in confusion. Her thoughts awhirl with uncertainty, she carefully pushed a hand beneath the fold of her robes, feeling for the bandage wrapped about the arrow wound. Where there should have been soreness, there was nothing. She folded the bandage down, and again her fingers searched for what should have been there, but found nothing save whole skin. There seemed to be a small bump, like a scar, but she would not know for certain until she was able to look on the wound directly. Confused and not a little nervous, she looked up.
To one side of the outcrop, Kian stood with his back to her, unmoving as he gazed down at a growing line of dead Asra a’Shah. While not positive in the dim light, when he looked away and revealed his profile, she saw a man struggling under a great weight. As well, she recalled the words she had heard while buried under stone and a blinding wave of pain: On my life … I will protect you.
In her memory, she had a hard time believing the voice was his, for it had been filled with a despair that did not fit his outward appearance. But it had been him. Who else could it have been? Just as sure, she knew that she had been dying when he spoke them. Yet now she was alive, seemingly unblemished. Even her old wounds were healed.
Still gazing at him, her heart softened. She understood now that his harshness toward the dying Asra a’Shah had not been a merciless indifference, but rather a carefully sculpted cliff of solid granite that he hid his pains behind, hurts that no man-of-arms could allow to show to those under his command.
What else are you hiding? she thought, considering the miraculous healing she had undergone. A moment later, she wondered if he even knew he had done something to her, something like Varis had done to the people of Krevar, yet altogether different. Without question, she felt as she always had, unlike Varis’s followers, who had come back from death, somehow changed.
“The power of creation,” she murmured to herself, awed. She did not know if what Kian had been blessed with would be enough to stop Varis, but she began to hope.
Chapter 23
Prince Varis Kilvar sat motionless astride his horse, while the wind pushed back his long, pale hair. He was not exactly sure how it had grown, other than that he had dreamed it so some nights past. When he had come awake, the dream and reality had become one. At the moment, however, his mind was not focused on his locks, but rather the wide chasm gouged into the face of the world before him.