Are they dirty?
No.
What are they like?
Like the sun reflected in water…
Karila nursery chant
Chapter 34
Healer
Voran stood at the top of the world. He had crossed more than a single boundary. This was not the Lows of Aer; this was something deeper. Clouds were scattered below him, as though he were set here by a Power of Aer to herd them. Most of the clouds sat barely higher than a great moon-shaped tarn far below his feet, nestled among the crags that divided Vasyllia from Nebesta. The tarn was lined at one end with bunched conifers that looked like bristles on a hair-brush from this distance. Where he stood, there was hardly any vegetation, except for a few pines gnarled by the constant wind. The rest was grey-brown stone and snow, though there was strangely little white for this depth of winter.
Then there was the black hawthorn.
The young hawthorn, frothing with white flowers, stood on the tip of a conical rock, its roots trailing downward along the stone until their tips dug into great cracks. Its thorns were like iron nails, but each dripped opalescent water onto the rock. The drops rolled individually down the stone, slowly, carefully, as though they were looking for the right path down, until they followed the roots through the cracks into the earth. There were no clouds above them, Voran checked. The tree wept.
Though Voran’s panic and fear beat at his heart like hammers, he froze in wonder at the sight. The hawthorn sang. It was nothing like the song of the Sirin; it was far more ancient and alien, and it revealed to Voran a depth of natural power that he never could have imagined. He had no doubt this tree was capable of healing the sick, and much more than that.
Something thwacked in the thin air and whistled. Voran’s left shoulder jerked back at a violent angle, and when he looked down, it had sprouted an arrow. He tried to move, but the pain was like his shoulder ripping apart. He was pinned to a tree.
Voran turned his head, trying to gather his thoughts in the maelstrom of pain and panic. Mirnían came out of a shelter of a crag, a set expression on his face. Mirnían pulled the bowstring back to his cheek and waited. His hands trembled slightly, and his face had gone white. He shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment, then tensed and loosed. The arrow grazed Voran’s left arm, tearing the flesh. Its whistle lingered in the sparse air.
Voran caught Mirnían’s eye and nodded, then dropped his head. He waited for the next arrow, sure that this time a marksman as good as Mirnían would not miss. He couldn’t help but feel intense sadness that it had come to this, but to his surprise, he didn’t blame Mirnían. He breathed out and was strangely calm.
Mirnían’s breathing was loud enough for Voran to hear. “No,” whispered Mirnían, his breathing turning ragged, “No, it can’t be.”
Voran looked up to see Mirnían ripping off his tunic with hands shaking so violently that he remained fully clothed despite all his efforts to disrobe. Finally, he managed to pull part of a sleeve off. His chest was leprous, and it stank, even at this distance. Mirnían’s eyes were wild. He raised his hands, and they were riddled with sores. He showed them to Voran like a frightened child.
“They are back,” he said, his eyes nearly all whites. “They are back.”
He ran toward the hawthorn and scrabbled up the rock, but it was slick with the tree’s tears, and he kept falling down. Finally, he reached the lowest thorns with one hand as he clung to the stone face with the other. He grabbed and screamed with pain, let go, and fell head over heels to the ground, where he lay, twitching spasmodically and sobbing. His hands were torn where he had grabbed at the weeping thorns. The hawthorn had not healed him.
Voran could no longer bear it. Gritting his teeth, he pulled the arrow out of his shoulder and nearly passed out from the pain. He forced his mind to ignore it, even as his head began to spin and his limbs wanted desperately to give up the fight. Somehow, he made it to Mirnían’s side, and dropped to his knees next to him.
Mirnían no longer struggled; he merely sobbed, looking like a wounded animal more than a human being. He raised both hands to his face in a half-hearted gesture of protection. Voran put his good arm under Mirnían’s neck and hugged him close to his body. He wept again—he was weeping far too much lately.
“Look at us,” he said to Mirnían through the racking sobs. “Is this what we wanted? How did it come to this, my brother?”
Mirnían’s eyes were wide with shock. “You will not kill me?” The question was full of disappointment, as though he had given up on life and wished that Voran would be brave enough to end it for him, since he couldn’t do it himself.
Voran’s body shook from his anger. Not letting go of Mirnían, holding him with the same gentle care as a mother gives to a newborn, he looked up at the cloudless sky and screamed his defiance.
“Where are you, Adonais?!” Voran’s voice echoed, broken by the sobs. “Mirnían has served you with his life. He has sacrificed everything to follow my mad lead. How could you have allowed it to come to this? You have all-power. What Vasylli has given more of himself, lost more of himself, gained more of himself in your service? Will you curse your own child?”
“You’re asking the wrong questions, my boy,” said a familiar voice. Standing under the shadow of the hawthorn was the Pilgrim, even older than Voran remembered him, leaning on his staff now for support, not merely show. The setting sun above his head hung blood red, barely touching the tips of the hawthorn. “Why do you expect the Heights to intervene for you whenever you need saving?”
“How many times has Adonais already intervened?” said Voran, forcing his voice to remain contained, though it trembled from the effort. “How many times have I been guided precisely to the place I need to be, at the appointed time? Even after I turned away from him, he found me a deliverer. Tarin died for me. Why all the extraordinary care for me, and this disregard for Mirnían? I do not deserve any of it!”
The Pilgrim smiled. “No, you do not.”
“I do not hold Mirnían responsible for shooting me.” said Voran. “I deserve much worse at his hands. I should be dead.”
Mirnían’s expression was unreadable, but he had stopped crying.
“I call on Adonais,” cried Voran. “Let him answer. Why do I, the guilty one, enjoy his patronage, while the one who has suffered the most remains cursed by leprosy?”
The Pilgrim raised his arms and grew, larger and larger until the very sky seemed to rest on his head. His grey cloak thrust back, he exploded into the radiance of a thousand suns. His knee-length chainmail was woven of light itself, kaleidoscopic, yet purely and utterly white. His eyes were as twin beacons, and his face was beyond youth or old age. His helmet-plume was a billowing flame; his hair was fluid gold on his massive shoulders. Joy poured out of him, joy like the first cry of a newborn, like the first star after a week-long snowstorm.
“I am the Harbinger, brother to Athíel of the Palymi. I am the mouth of the Most High. I am the light behind the dawn. I am the fire that burns the setting sun. I am the one who witnessed the covenant between Lassar and the Heights. Do not call on Adonais. Speak to me, if you dare.”
For a moment, Voran thought that the Harbinger spoke the name Adonais with distaste. But how could that be?
“I am a servant of the Heights,” whispered Voran, forcing himself to look at the giant of light. “I am nothing. Yet has not this man, this prince of Vasyllia, done enough to deserve more than this?”
“Do you doubt that all he has suffered is part of a design?”
“Design? What design can there be? Adonais has abandoned us, and old Powers are coming back to take the earth for themselves.”
“Voran. Consider the past days. You cannot fail to come to this conclusion. You four—Voran, Mirnían, Lebía, Sabíana—have been led. By me and by the white stag and by others, all along paths thorny and painful. You ask why? If I told you the full truth, you would not believe me. You must come to it yourself. The answer to all that your questioning heart desires is at the heart of Vasyllia.”
“The one place that I cannot reach.”
“You must reach it. Do not forget. Vasyllia is everything. Even if she falls, you must go back. Search for its heart. At the heart lie all the answers.”
The Harbinger’s light flared like a huge furnace and spun faster and faster, until the white light was a huge pillar, reaching up far beyond the sun, ending on Voran and Mirnían, blood pouring from both their wounds. The rest of the world was a colorless darkness; only they two were illumined in color and light. Then the Harbinger disappeared, and time seemed to begin anew. The sun descended behind the flowers and thorns of the weeping tree, turning the tears red as blood falling from spear-tips.
