The Halls of Healing
At first, the healers were certain Lord Lorent would never awaken. “Vosaik toxins are difficult to heal when delivered by surface wound,” Healer Orantsa said. She had extracted the two needles, contained them in a jar, and placed that jar within another larger jar before showing them to Lady ?anveswe. “These penetrated bone. Poison festers within his marrow yet.”
Lady ?anveswe gravely considered the needles, bloodied by her very own son—her only son. The remnants of venom etched the inner jar. “Is there no hope for him?”
“Hope is a choice we make,” replied the healer.
“Bring every choir in S?xe to my son’s room,” said the lady.
Hexant choirs, each with hexant healers, gathered within that very Light. They encircled Lord Lorent, colorless and sweating in his bed, to sing hexant hymnals in sacred harmonies. Their songs were somber. None of them believed he would recover, either.
Still, Lady ?anveswe sent for hexant carriages led by the swiftest elk to bring more healers to the xilcadis. She also sent a lone rider to the coast. “Find Lord Mayor Círin.” She had already demanded the Heralds and Osurmite convey the news of Lorent’s attack, but some information didn’t belong in such songs. The solitary rider was meant to tell Círin the full, unfiltered truth.
The initial choirs of healers sang without rest until carriages returned with replacements.
A handful of Lights passed. Lord Lorent remained unconscious.
<> his heartsick mother murmured from his bedside.
She only left when Lord Lorent’s half-brother Earinon arrived to stand vigil at his bedside. A cousin took the next vigil; Uncle Sorlen took the next thereafter.
Finally, color washed over Lord Lorent’s cheeks.
With excitement, the healers applied fresh poultices to his wounds. They drew more poison and rot from within. The injuries grew less inflamed. Outside, blossoms fell, and fruit began forming. Cherries the color of the sunset-stained desert grew fat on the trees. Lingering snow on distant mountains melted into surging rivers.
Then, at long last, with Uncle Sorlen at his bedside, Lorent awakened.
The first thing he said was this:
“Where is Lady Enura?”
* * *
While unconscious, Lord Lorent’s confused, sickly mind had slid from delusion to memory to dream with no distinction between them.
He remembered talking to his mother before the march of brides.
She had been holding one of his hands in both of hers, which were far daintier, with much longer fingers. “Realize that the other Great Houses in Belarion hold us in low regard. We lack the breadth of Kovenor holdings. The Enantir have enough liquid capital to drown us all. Neither would remember to include us if listing the oldest families.”
“Those other families are also constantly mired in games of war, manipulation, murder,” Lorent had replied. He grinded his teeth as he tolerated Lady ?anveswe adjusting his sleeve. “I’d much prefer a happy life in a well-nurtured sin?os to their drama.”
“You are a lone tree in the greater grove of your dynasty. You must think about your responsibilities as if you are a grown adult.”
“I am grown,” he said. “My dear àma, I am half as old as a millennium. I have long sat on S?xe’s throne as Patrician and it has thrived under my care.”
She reached up to cup his cheek as she smiled pityingly. “It is not a challenge to serve the xilcadis in the same palace where your Lord Mayor manages the si?e. You will lighten his burden if you marry well—do you realize that?”
Lore had kissed his mother’s knuckles and lowered her wrist. Firmly, he said, “Short of marrying the eldest Enantir, no marriage could make our Great House compare to the Enantir in wealth. I don’t think your expectations are even reasonable.”
This had left his mother momentarily wordless. Patrician Lorent had only recently begun arguing with her, and after the first decade, she still never expected it. She learned slowly. She would see him as a doting child until she died.
“It is never one maneuver that wins a war,” said Lady ?anveswe so coldly, like the night in desert winter. In the dream, he suddenly felt miniaturized before his mother. “See how young you are, to think so small?”
Lorent’s height dwindled on every one of her words until he drew eye-level with her belt of keys. She spoke with the restrained impatience of mother to child.
“Our generations elapse a thousand years, and eras will elapse a thousand generations.” She was a span taller than Lore. “Our smallest decisions will ripple out and change the future for àlvare we will never know. We must make these choices with the gravity it deserves.”
“I must live every Light and Night for these thousands of years! I will only marry for love regardless of wealth!” He had to shout to hope she would hear him, he had become so small.
“You think you know everything,” said his mother.
He was so small, he fell through a crack in the floor. He slipped away.
Sleep was turbulent.
Lorent had dreamed of floating in a Night-blackened sky where the Everhalls hung amid thunderheads. Each Everhall blurred into different colors than the pinpricks he often viewed through the telescope in his mother’s orrery.
The Everhalls were huge when he swam among them, and they contained a spectrum of vibrant worlds. Orotio was crimson like the desert at sunset; Daledus was golden like fading reeds. Lorent stretched out his arms to embrace them. But they never came near. He could only admire the shine they cast upon storm-weighted clouds.
Lightning sparked distantly, giving volume to the sky and diminishing Lorent among it all.
He was nothing. Not even a soaring bird, or the feather torn loose from its wing. He was a mote in comparison to the Everhalls, the storm, the sky.
Then he began to fall.
The Everhalls fled as wind battered his body. Clouds absorbed and released him. He barely registered the xilcadis roofs before they became huge—and he punched a crater into the palace, entering his own body like a world tree falling on an elk.
Lorent gasped and flailed into consciousness.
“Where is Lady Enura?” he asked, his tongue clumsy, his throat thick, the words muffled.
“He awakens!” <
Lore rubbed at his eyes, bleary from his long rest. It wasn’t the first time he had roused to find himself on one of those bleached white Healer beds, but last time, he had only gotten a shoulder dangerously tangled in a rope on his swoop. This time, the pain suffused his entire body. His fingers felt like they had turned into twigs. His feet were swollen and numb. Hexes, his hair was hurting. He could barely see a thing.
A nearby hand clasped his, and it comforted him enough to cease his fight against the bedsheets entangling him. He relaxed into a sensation of dulled pain—the source of the numbing. He needed more time before he could see well enough to delineate the choir of healers from the walls they stood against. A full hexant choir attended Lorent—six well-trained L?sàlvare in clean white robes with hymn books in their hands.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Thank Setar, you’re alive,” said Uncle Sorlen. The one holding his hand.
Lorent meant to say something like, “Was my life ever in question?” His deviant tongue refused to shape the words properly. His eyes told him that there was nothing on his chest, yet he felt like a cart had rolled on top of him anyway. He struggled against the invisible weight of it.
“Calm yourself. Settle,” said Sorlen. “You were struck by an arrow at your mother’s fête. The arrow was cursed, so we suspect an assassination attempt.”
Even sedated, Lorent could tell his uncle was holding something back. He weakly flailed. Sorlen pushed his hands down.
“Calm,” Sorlen said again. This time, he sang it too. <
Two weeks? Lorent had no sense of time passing. An ordinary Night spent meditating felt endless, but those two weeks may as well have not existed.
Sorlen continued. “What matters now is that you’re safe. Your mother will be relieved to hear you’re well.”
“And you?” asked Lorent.
“I suppose I’m glad too,” said Sorlen with a gentle playfulness.
Sorlen left to alert Lady ?anveswe, and for a time, Lorent simply luxuriated in his respite. His bed chambers had the windows thrown open to permit fresh S?xe air to flow around him. Birdsong chattered playfully from the branches just outside. Leaves rustled in the wind, providing hushed percussion to the healers’ continued song. He lie halfway in beams of midday Light, bathing his lower body in warmth. The fact he felt any pain in such circumstances must have meant he was ill indeed.
In fact, Lorent didn’t think he’d ever felt such pain that healers could not alleviate it within minutes.
He meditated on that vicious ache. How could it be worse than dislocating his shoulder on the swoop? Breaking an ankle? Or falling off an elk? He’d even taken an arrow once before, glancingly, in the training hall, and he hadn’t suffered because the healers swiftly soothed him.
The door opened. Captain Idanedien arrived, and all worries flew out of Lord Lorent’s mind.
Idan was a warmer bedside companion than Sorlen. Wearing studded Drakalban armor would have made anyone else intimidating companionship, but Idan had an easy smile, a quick wit, and a limitless well of temperance. He was the captain of the S?xe Drakalban—a policing force that protected the xilcadis. Idan was new to the job, and the youngest captain to ever serve; he was less than a decade older than Lord Lorent.
The captain arrived at Lorent’s side and set his gloves on the floor so his touch upon Lorent’s hands would be softer.
“I didn’t think I’d see you wake again,” Idan said. His searching gaze felt tangible over Lorent’s features. “What a relief to see your pupils contract at the shine of my lantern.”
Lorent could barely say, “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“This is a target,” said Idan. He took a vial out of his vest pocket. “A thorn that attracts the arrow. Once a thorn is inside someone, that arrow will strike true no matter how badly fired. It’s the kind of thing you use when you want someone dead and no indication of the killer. She could be whole spans away when she shoots. In this case, the killer shot at you from across the chasm. She used a guard tower. Took down four rangers.”
“Lady Enura.” That was the one thing Luc could clearly say. Her name felt reachable no matter the weight.
“What about her?” asked Idan.
She was the only significant thought Lorent could seize upon. “Lady Enura. The assassin.”
“We do suspect—”
“What if the assassin hurt Lady Enura?” asked Lorent. He rose to a halfway seated position to clutch Idan’s hand. “Did you ever find her? Is she safe?”
“We’ve got good reason to think Lady Enura is the assassin,” said Idan.
“How could that possibly be?”
They had been collecting evidence for two weeks. No records showed Lady Enura’s arrival to the xilcadis, her entourage had been registered as four individuals rather than the two who arrived, and nobody had been able to find either of them since the incident. But Idan only needed one grim truth to explain his certainty. “The real Enura and her family were killed in their manor by the same assassin who targeted you.”
* * *
Rivoras an Danoras had initially reported the deaths. He arrived in S?xe only two Lights after the fête, bleeding from still-open wounds. He had ridden an elk so long that it collapsed with him at the gates. Rivoras roused after some rest and medicine. The elk did not.
He had identified himself as kerotera to the real Lady Enura. He looked far different from the kerotera who had accompanied the assassin to the fête. Rivoras was narrow-shouldered, stiff-backed, and long-legged. His ears suggested he was a L?sàlvar, though what would lead one of the High into such an emasculating profession was not obvious.
Rivor had been eager to speak to the Drakalban. “I believe an assassin is targeting Great House Vulasir,” the kerotera had said.
“We already know,” said Idan. “An attempt was made against our Patrician.”
Rivor muttered a prayer and crossed himself. “Then I was too late. The only gift I bring is poor tidings.”
He reported that he had left the manor for a few hours to check the perimeter fencing and repair the path to the main road. Rivor had been working as the groundskeeper for several seasons now, though a kerotera ordinarily did not do such work. Liverwort Manor had lost several staff members to Orkar unrest. New employees were difficult to acquire so remotely. Since his lady should have been safe in her office, he had spent a lot of time working the grounds, leaving her out of sight.
Rivor had been attacked, knocked unconscious, and hogtied. He’d struggled an entire Light and Night to break free of his bonds. Then he found the entire family killed and put on display.
“Lady Enura and I had been about to depart for S?xe,” said Rivor. “The assassin took some of her dresses, her carriage. The invitation.”
When Rivor finished his report, Idan went to the nearest Osurmit to communicate with other such military towers. A relay down to the Orkar Federation led to a team of Inquisitors traveling to Lady Enura’s manor. After a few hours, confirmation came back from a similar relay: Everyone in Liverwort Manor was dead and mutilated.
It was suspicious that assassins had allowed Rivoras an Danoras to survive while the rest of the family had not, but Idan found many things about the situation suspicious. He had never seen so elaborate an assassination attempt. Idan had subverted many assassination attempts against nobility, and the only attack nearly as complicated had been against a visiting Magistrate.
Hexes, who could even afford a true-strike arrow?
Patrician Lorent never should have survived.
Of course, Lore represented a lot of impossibilities. He was entirely too absurd to have such noble birth. Only a dictate by his fond father meant Lore had become Patrician of xilcadis S?xe. He oversaw the local xilcadis and sin?os with all the reverence of an overgrown child.
Lore’s first act as Patrician had been to create three more esbats in honor of Setar, the Aspiration of Celebration, and then import fifty wagons of his favorite wine.
He was considered a just mediator with an unusual skill for charming vassals out of disputes. His hundredth act as Patrician (he kept a count) had been to add another three esbats for Setar. A youthful hedonist should have promptly bankrupted himself, but Lorent also had good taste in employees, and he rightly trusted his bookkeepers. His parties were fabulous, his people enjoyed themselves, and he never embarrassed his Lord Mayor father too badly.
Idan loved Lore terribly, but he was absurd.
It had been a very long two weeks while Lore underwent a potion-induced slumber and choirs of healers sang over him. Idan had hovered and paced and yelled at other Drakalban. None of it had proven productive. They had already located the guards murdered by Assassin Enura and identified the fatal poisons on the arrow’s tip. They knew Enura was not Enura, but only thanks to the surviving kerotera.
Idan kept standing over Lore and trying to think of any other time he’d felt so helpless.
Only someone too silly to die, like Lore, could have come back from that kind of attack.
And he had.
* * *
Now Lore was fighting his way out of his sick bed, acting like it hurt terribly and also like the All-Mother herself couldn’t have stopped him. He had been wearing only a loincloth in bed, but he dropped it as soon as he stood, shouted for clean clothes, and stumbled to the vanity for a comb.
“What in the Everhalls has possessed you?” Idan asked.
Lore tripped over his own feet. Idan caught him.
“I’ll have to speak to my father about this,” Lore said. “Perhaps he can help me find this false Lady Enura.”
“Lord Mayor Círin is not in S?xe,” said Idan.
“You mean—my father didn’t come to my bedside?”
“He’s still on his hunt.” The Captain looked profoundly unhappy about this, and his grasp turned into a half-embrace. “Your uncle, mother, cousins, and I were all here. The advisors have been worrying about you.”
“But Tatà still hunts.” Lore tried to shove off his friend and failed. “I’m already weeks behind the search for the assassin. I can’t wait another moment.”
“There are ample paladins on the hunt for her.”
“I’m sure my mother has seen to that. But I’m the only one who will be able to find her. Ah, my servants! Dress me!” He made the demand grandly, arms wide, as if he were not being held steady by the captain of the Drakalban.
The servants hurried over to do as demanded.
“What makes you think you’ll be able to find her?” asked Idan.
“Fate, my friend. Fate! It’s not every day your future wife tries to assassinate you!” said Lore. “I’d love to know why.”
And Idan said, “Your future what?”
A glossary for the curious
àma: Mother.
choir: Yes, this is what you're thinking - a group of singers. But elves have a unique ability to transform their world through song. Choirs are trained to sing songs specific to their duties. There are healing choirs, but also choirs that handle weaving, construction, brewing, etcetera. Their singing ability is considered mundane and unrelated to magick.
esbat: A minor, routine religious event.
Everhalls: A complex of afterlife worlds akin to Heaven and Hell. There are twelve in total. Elves regard twelve stars in their Night sky as being the Everhalls.
hexant: Six of something. Elf society uses Base 6 numerals, weeks are six Lights and six Nights long, and their religion is oriented around two groups of six spirits each. "Hex" meaning "six" is etymologically Greek in reality; this is a translation of six in the elf language ("?") and would actually be said as "k?" instead of hexant. Because of the centrality of six to this society, it feels important to have a distinct word rather than saying "half-dozen" or whatever. However, the author loves the word "hex" and decided to prefer hexant to k?. This is distinct from hex as in "curse"; when someone swears by saying "hexes," they're saying "bak!" in-universe.
Osurmit: One of many towers around the continent that serves as information relays. Osurmite specifically communicate encoded, sensitive information, in comparison to Herald towers, which relay public news and propaganda.
Setar: A religious icon who represents Celebration. She's like the party Spirit for elves who like to party.
vosaik: This is just a big scary vulture-looking monster.