High Priest Antil paused at the doorway of his personal chamber, peering around the jamb and feeling foolish as he did so. While he was Shotir's chief cleric, the God of Healing's temple in Byora was a modest one, and his room was appropriately small. Normally a wide window covering half of the north wall provided most of the room's light, but since his patient's dramatic arrival, that was covered in sacking. There was a tiny window in the side was which admitted a little pale winter sunlight, but Antil had still brought a candle.
Stop being such a fool, he chided himself, she's your patient, for pity's sake! The remonstrations had little effect. He still felt like he was intruding. He glanced behind him to check no priests or novices were watching him, but there was no one. People rarely came up to the top floor of the temple; they knew this was his personal space, where he could get his thoughts back in order and rest after working in the hospital below.
Antil was a middle-aged man of average height, with thinning hair and somewhat thick around the waist — a professional hazard for Priests of Shotir, those who could heal at least. Magical healing produced a fierce hunger, and only Antil's vanity had kept that in check. Unlike most of his order, his belly was a modest bulge under his yellow robes, and a tidy beard hid his fleshy neck. There was nothing he could do about the worry lines.
He forced himself to enter the chamber, and once over the threshold habit reasserted itself. She was very sensitive to light, so he walked around the bed and crouched at her side. She wasn't asleep; he could sense her wariness, like a wounded animal, and he was careful not to touch her yet. However badly hurt she might be, she was still touched by a Goddess, and he didn't want to do anything to provoke alarm in her. Instead he just sat awhile and looked at her face, fascinated by the mystery she presented.
With a tiny whimper the woman turned her head to look at him and he saw those curious eyes focus on him. They were dark green, possessing an inner light that reminded Antil of the jade ring his mother had worn until the day she died. The woman's face was bruised and covered in splinter-scratches, but the swelling had already gone down. He realised she would be arrestingly beautiful once the discolouration faded.
'Well, my girl, and how do you feel this morning?' he asked gently, not expecting a response. His ability with magic was as unremarkable as he, and healing was the only skill he'd ever worked on, but his latent senses recognised enough to be worried by her. The one-sided conversation was principally for his. own benefit, helping him maintain a normal train of thought so he could focus on his healing — not that he'd been able to do much yet, partly because the divine spark in her was far stronger than a priest's, and resisted Shotir's workings, but also because replacing the ruined was beyond mortal skills.
Antil let a trickle of warm energy run into her body to sooth her, stroking her hand until she stopped fighting it. Once the fear was gone he pulled the blanket covering her down a little, but the mark was still there, as he'd expected.
'Damn,' he said, scratching at his beard and frowning. Around her throat was a clear hand-print of greyish shadow. The skin itself was not damaged, just tinted — as though an ash-covered hand had grabbed her — except it would not wash off.
'Someone's marked you,' he told her, 'you who have been touched by a Goddess as profoundly as one Chosen. They grabbed you and they beat you senseless. They broke your leg, a shoulder, an arm, ribs, a bone in your neck — and their very touch was enough to leave a permanent mark on your skin.'
He shivered. It wasn't the only strange aspect of her neck: running his finger over it he could feel a series of lumps, for all the world like a necklace under her skin — and what magic he had been able to work had confirmed that was exactly what it was: a necklace she had been wearing had been driven completely into her flesh.
'That's not even the worst,' he continued, looking down at the hand-print thoughtfully. 'We all felt it, what happened in Alterr's chamber. Every priest in Hale felt something terrible. Folk are saying a God died… but I wonder if it was not a Goddess?'
He found a cloth and almost mechanically began to wipe her face.
'I went to the Temple of the Lady. It's shut; the priestesses have not been seen outside the walls. Hale is in chaos, so no one else has really noticed yet, but that will change soon enough.'
He removed the blanket covering her body and stared down at her body. A small wrap protected her modesty for form's sake, though the sheer number of bandages and wrappings meant almost half her total skin surface was covered. He saw to each one in turn, humming the mantras of healing as he worked. Without channelling magic they would do little, but the familiar sound was better than silence.
It was clear that she was healing supernaturally well. Antil was not so vain as to believe it was down to him. Perhaps I helped a little, he conceded, but no more than that. When he touched her tightly splinted leg the woman moaned and tried to reach out, but the effort of sitting up defeated her. She sank back down, her eyes rolling up as her lips moved fractionally. He placed his hands on her chest and channelled magic into her body, not focusing on knitting bone or flesh, which she would manage on her own, but on blanking out the pain. That at least he could manage: her mind was still human, and a mind could be fooled into ignoring pain, even if the substance of her body resisted any efforts beyond that.
After a minute he stopped to catch his breath, feeling like an old man. He'd left a small bag of willow bark pieces by her bedside. He picked it up and fumbled stiff-fingered with the tie for a moment before managing to get it open. As he did so the sacking nailed over the window fluttered under a rogue gust of wind and the movement caused him to flinch, dropping the little bag. But somehow his patient's hand had slipped off the bed and instead of hitting the floor, the tie of the bag snagged on her fingers.
Antil looked down. Her eyes were closed, her expression one of restless sleep. There was no sign she'd even noticed what had happened.
'Good catch,' Antil muttered with a puzzled frown, 'or should I perhaps say lucky catch?'
He didn't know whether to wince or smile at that thought; luck was a fickle mistress — if the expression could endure after the Lady herself was dead. It would not be long before the bands of penitents began to ask earnest questions about the damage to the window. He had explained it away as a thrown fragment of stone from the explosion that had obliterated Alterr's temple, but sooner or later someone would realise that was peculiar.
'What are you in all this?' he wondered, running his fingers down her arm, feeling how hot her skin was. 'If you were there with the Lady, how is it you survived and she did not? A servant cannot be stronger than the God — did she believe you important enough to save at the expense of her own life?'
Antil shivered again. The idea that an immortal would do that was ludicrous, but it was the only answer he'd come up with so far.
'My vow means I must protect the injured, even if the penitents of Death try to take you,' he said, resolved to do his duty, 'but if it's true the Lady saved you for a reason, you may not need that protection longer than a few days.' He took the cloth and trickled a little more water onto her lips. This time they parted eagerly to accept it. 'Let us hope whatever did this to you doesn't come looking, for if that happens you'll need more than my vow, I think.'
Ilumene looked up at the cloudy sky and tried to discern the position of the sun. It didn't do him much good; the western horizon showed nothing more than an overall glow, but it was a more cheering sight than the east, where an ugly swell of grey crowded the jagged mountain cliffs. His instincts told him that it was not quite mid-morning — after a fight, perceived time raced along, in his experience, fuelled by adrenalin and panic.