CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

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Alaric

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23rd of Decepter, 935 PC

Alaric dropped the Leos into the man’s hand and looked at him sternly. “Get us to the edge of The Emerald Wood and I’ll double it.” Barrock Sledge nodded and climbed onto the bench of his covered wagon. Alaric left him to his preparations and walked the length of the five-wagon caravan.

He turned the corner and looked through the hole in the canvas cover. Tripelthin was fidgeting around on the hard bed, cursing and mumbling under his breath. It made Alaric grin to see the staunch old advisor so uncomfortable. The tan-skinned Manaya Flame was already sitting with her legs crossed opposite the round curmudgeon. The intensity of the fight inside the inn was still plastered on her face. Their bags and gear lay in a pile near the front of the wagon.

“All set?” Alaric asked.

Tripelthin shot his head around. “Damn Lotus! Letting our horses go. Making me ride in this foul contraption.”

“Make the best of it, my friend. Make the best of it.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Tripelthin said and glanced over Alaric’s shoulder.

Alaric didn’t have to turn to know Lilly lay unconscious in the wagon behind him. Therrin had kept her alive but he had not allowed the healer to give her an ounce more of his magic. For every shred of doubt Alaric was feeling about making the woman suffer to break her will, Tripelthin demonstrated five shreds of confidence.

“A difficult lesson to teach, no doubt. And an even more difficult one to learn for young Therrin, but we cannot afford a weak link in our chain.” Tripelthing settled into his uncomfortable seat against a box and looked at him with expectations and zero remorse.

Alaric was only halfway into his own wagon when Therrin pounced on him with nervous questions.

“I don’t understand, sir.” Therrin was sitting opposite him, nervously looking down at Lilly’s unconscious body. “Why can’t I revive her? Don’t we need her? She’s one of us. Why not help her?” The healer had done just what he had been told. Lilly was hanging onto life by a thread. Her body surely begging to die.

He crawled next to a barrel and leaned against it. Lilly’s blood coated much of the bed. It’s smell was overwhelming. “Have you learned nothing yet?” He was only half surprised by how cold his tone was. It certainly wasn’t new, but he didn’t expect to be talking in such a manner with Therrin, his project.

Therrin leaned away from him. Breathless and confused. “What?”

He looked down at the unconscious Intuitionist. Her face was pale and stuck in a desperate look of agony that made him wonder if she was, in fact, already dead. Alaric’s voice was even stiffer this time. “Have you not been listening? Since Coyne, since Hawk’s Nest, during every damn chance I’ve had.”

Therrin’s fearful respect for Alaric’s magic, his temper, was back. He shook his head slowly. “I have, sir, but I don’t understand.”

“Clearly, you fool.” The words filled the wagon with awkward confusion and hurt feelings. Alaric cared how Therrin was feeling. Deep down he truly did. But now was not the time for feelings.

“But she’s… she’s-”

“She’s a stubborn chink in our armor, you pitiful fool. She has to be made to obey!” Therrin managed a blanked-faced nod. Do I even believe that? What has she done that has been so terrible? Get upset with me for tearing her away from her new infatuation. Scowl at me a time or two. Does that really mean she won’t help us when it matters? He looked through the hole in the front of the wagon to see Manaya sitting perfectly still in the cart in front of them. Her eyes were clearly fixed on Tripelthin, listening to his every word. He was talking again before he realized it. “You will heal her just enough to allow her to walk and talk. I don’t want her legs or lungs strong enough to run. You leave as much pain in her as you can. She will rely on you for relief. To live. Is that simple enough for you to understand?”

“Aye.” Therrin looked as one often does when brow-beaten by a superior.

“Good. Now do it.”

The wagon jerked into motion. He steadied himself with his hands. As did Therrin before crawling onto his knees beside the bloody Intuitionist. He stared down at the horrific gash across her chest. If the healer had not been nearby when the wound was inflicted, Lilly would already be dead. There was no doubt in his mind. Therrin tucked his fingers into the ragged hole cut into the woman’s blouse and began tearing away the cloth from her body. Within seconds his hands were doused in blood. A deep trench ran across her body just below her breasts. Her guts remained inside her body but it appeared as though if Therrin chose to he could peel the front of her stomach down like a flap and remove them.

The healer started at the left edge of the wound, placing his index and middle fingers gently against her crimson skin. His eyes closed peacefully as his magic flowed from his fingertips. Alaric knew the euphoric feeling well. The magic would be searching for the pain, none too difficult in Lilly’s case, and seeping deep into her body to repair the wounds. The warmth would soothe her, if she was conscious. It would let her know all would be alright. He was glad she wasn’t able to sense that. When he’s done with her she will look brand new. She’ll never see herself as damaged goods. The pain will subside and the scar will be gone if he heals her too quickly.

Slowly but surely Lilly’s blood began to make its way back into her body like a river flowing in reverse. Therrin’s fingers were working their way across the gash, closing it with each subtle adjustment. Alaric could feel the anger and jealousy rising within him. Before he knew it, his fingers were feeling his own wound. The one he had fixed himself, not with the skilled hand of a healer.

“Stop,” Alaric said. Therrin looked up.

“What is it, sir?” he asked quietly.

“Wake her.”

“Sir.”

Alaric stared at him, not a single ounce of compromise was present anywhere.

“She’ll panic. The pain will be unbearable,” Therrin said.

“Wake her.”

Therrin frowned. Remained still, staring into Alaric’s eyes deeply, searching for the answers his brain couldn’t muster on its own. When he came up empty his shoulders slouched and he placed his bloody fingers on Lilly’s temples. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Lilly’s eyes began to flutter gently, then wildly. Therrin pulled his hands back quickly like a child that knew he had done something wrong. Lilly’s eyes opened, stared around, looking at everything around her but with no conscious awareness of anything. Then she winced, then frowned, then her teeth were visible, clenched tight. Her hands were weak and clumsy as they moved to her wound. They were hanging limply just above her body when her eyes snapped open, panic-filled and terrifyingly intense. She screamed in agony.

Alaric got to his knees. As he moved toward the injured woman’s head he glanced through the hole in the front of the wagon. Tripelthin was staring back at them. There was a silent moment of understanding. Then it was gone. Whisked away by Lilly’s panicked grab at his shirt.

“Help me!”

He looked down at her. “We’re trying right now, Lilly. Therrin is trying. You woke up suddenly while he was working on your wound.”

Lilly was capable of little more than the only words people in excruciating pain could find. “Help me! Please! Help me!” She tugged on him so fiercely she pulled his face closer to hers. Her warm breath washed over him as she repeatedly begged him for help. He grabbed her wrist tight.

“Lilly! Look at me!”

“Help me, Sampson. Please.”

“Look at me Lilly. Look at me!” He was screaming into the woman’s face now but she couldn’t control herself.

“I don’t want to die!” She was shaking her head back and forth in a tizzy.

He clutched her jaw firmly in his muscular hand and held her face still. “You will not die Lilly Pattick. We will not let you.”

She nodded her head slightly within his grip.

“Help her, quickly!” he said without taking his eyes from hers.

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Lilly died with no kind words having been said, with no one holding her hand, with no peace whatsoever. She had died in pain, begging for help, screaming for her mother. Alaric dumped her body out the back of the moving caravan unceremoniously and with such disrespect that he regretted doing so the entire time he watched her lifeless body disappear into the night as the wagon rumbled on toward The Emerald Forest. Regret faded with Lilly’s body though, replaced abruptly and thoroughly with anger. He turned his eyes on Therrin. There was no respect for his magic in the young man’s eyes now. Only disgust and hatred.

“How could you let her die?!”

Therrin’s defiant voice filled the wagon. “I made the only choice you gave me. I’m a healer, not a torturer.” The pain of feeling betrayed was illuminated by the moonlight creeping into the wagon.

Insolent little bastard. “Healers don’t let people die, you imbecile! And neither do torturers for that matter. They use them to get what they need out of them!”

“You’re a madman. Lilly was no threat to you.”

“Now she isn’t!”

“She never was!” Therrin’s fire was glowing hotter than his own.

Alaric’s hands were shaking with rage. “How dare you disrespect me.”

“I thought I could trust you.”

“You don’t understand what’s at stake!”

“Lives are at stake! All our lives! And she was here to protect us! And you wanted to make her suffer! Beat her into submission. I understand perfectly well what you were doing! My father used to do it to my mother! What comes out the other side of such torture is not a person willing to do whatever it takes for you!” His voice lowered. “Only a scared, helpless shell of what they used to be. ”

The words hit Alaric like a ton of bricks. But his temper held its ground.

“Fuck your mother. The dead mean nothing! Like Lilly now. Because of you.” It was now Therrin who had been blindsided. His fire had been extinguished instantly. Alaric would have liked to believe he hadn’t said it, that someone else was in the wagon with them. But he knew it was him. His temper. His uncontrollable temper. He wanted to backtrack but it was too foreign to him to give an inch. “Good soldiers are made. Molded. Turned into something that obeys. They do without question. Without thought or hesitation. Lilly’s mind was poisoned by emotions.”

There was a sarcastic scoff across from Alaric. “Without thought…” Therrin said quietly. Then there was a dark, cold silence. Alaric could sense Therrin was thinking deeply. He could sense his own previous profundity working against him. “Like those that evil people manage to fool into believing something terrible?”

Alaric paused. Stared at the healer. His breathing was loud and heavy. His heart was racing. He winced in pain. Only now realizing he had released his magical grip on his wound and was a hair’s width from using it on Therrin. Only now realizing his hand was on the hilt of his dagger. Only now noticing that Therrin has his dagger in his hand.

“That’s different.” His voice was lower now. Calmer.

Therrin shook his head. “No, it’s not.”

“It’s similar, yes. But distinctly different.”

“Therrin continued to shake his head.

“Evil manipulates the mind into doing terrible things to other people, Therrin. I wanted Lilly to do great things. Things I didn’t believe she would have done otherwise.”

The caravan came to a sudden stop. Therrin was crawling toward the back immediately. Don’t walk away from me. Therrin froze on all fours, facing the cold darkness of the night.

Alaric wiped the saliva away from his mouth. Grinned at the helpless healer. He pulled a hard candy from his pocket, flicked the wrapped away. “Don’t forget where our brothers are, Therrin. All it takes is a simple message and Elgar will put an arrow through Corbin’s skull.” He released his grip on the defiant Medicalist.

Therrin crawled out of the wagon without looking at Alaric once and stormed away.

Alaric leaned his head against the canvas behind him.

“Dammit!” He slammed his fists on the bed of the wagon.