Mission for a Healer

It was December and Kori awoke one morning to see heavy flakes falling past the window. Erika was snuggled against her for extra warmth. The grounds outside were wrapped in an icy mantle.

Kori gave a piercing cry of delight and Erika came awake at once.

"Your throat has healed well, Kori," she murmured.

"Ooh, sorry dear, but see, it's snowing." Kori pointed to the window. "I always dreamed we would someday build a snowman together as sisters, but I only had a dream for so long... If that dream can come true, then why not others?"

Erika gave a small smile. "Did you dream the size of the snowman and how much I would contribute to the effort?"

"Oh yes," said Kori brightly, "But I never dreamed I would have a face full of metal." She touched the metal mask which still felt heavy on her face. "I'll make you a cup of herbal tea, Madeleine finds it a great way to start a winter morning."

She leapt down from the bed while Erika wrapped the blankets around herself, trying to conserve heat. Kori skipped across the floor into the tiny kitchen that adjoined the bedroom and busied herself mixing herbs and heating a kettle over the glowing coals. After dissolving a spoonful of syrup into the hot mixture she returned to Erika who was sitting up in the bed, the blankets still around her.

Kori sat beside her sister as she sipped the tea and put an arm around her shoulders. She thought it a pity that the metal mask prevented her from giving a good morning kiss. The pale morning sunshine lit up Erika's delicate features and gleamed off her long black hair. "How is it, dear?" asked Kori. "This particular blend of herbs tones Madeleine up and makes her happy, even on a wintry morning. I'll bring up your breakfast next."

"It is very fine tea," said Erika with a slight nod. "My compliments go to the brewer."

"Anyway, breakfast time," said Kori, clapping her hands together. She rushed from the room, down the oaken staircase and then off a doorway on the other side of the entrance hall that led to a bare, stone staircase, the way lit up by burning torches, until she arrived in the servant quarters. Appetising smells emanated from the kitchen and she scudded through the stone archway into the cavernous stone room where the servants were working the ovens.

There was a maid with her back to Kori who was preparing the Princesses' silver breakfast tray now. She turned and looked right into Kori's metal mask and gave a little start.

"Sorry, did I startle you?" said Kori, laying a hand gently on her arm. "This mask… I'll take our tray up. It'll save you climbing all those stairs."

00O00

"Breakfast, your Majesty," sang Kori as she re-entered the bedroom. She presented Erika with the silver tray and lying face down on the bed, propping herself up with her elbows. Breakfast included boiled eggs, white toast, wheat porridge, wild boar sausages and smoked kippers.

Kori pushed her hair away from her eyes and tapped the metal cheek of her mask. "What can I fit through my metal mask today? Perhaps I should try mashing up everything sweet and savoury and then swallowing the paste."

Erika retrieved a leather pouch from her bedside table and withdrew a silver spoon. "My special spoon fits through your mask, darling."

The sisters played a game of exactly what Erika could spoon feed to Kori and when they had bathed, they got ready to go outside. Kori did not need to wrap up particularly warm – indeed, she preferred to go barefoot in the snow, enjoying the feel of it under her toes, but Erika wrapped up warmly in the finest white fur coat and fur gloves and boots made of thick leather. Kori smiled behind her mask at how fine her sister looked bedecked in furs and taking her by her gloved hand, led her outside, delighting in the sensation of the snow melting under her toes.

00O00

"Winter's minions have been busy, causing all this thick snow," said Kori when their snowman was nearly complete. "Remember the rhyme?"

Unprompted, she began to recite:

"Beware the Hoarfrostman my dear, when the moon is fat.

Sharp of claw and spindle-limbed he is and cunning.

With icy breath and freezing touch he brings the snowfall chill.

But winter hungers and has teeth my love, and sharpened ones at that."

Kori paused and scooped up some more snow with her bare hands. "The rhyme doesn't sound altogether encouraging, but Winter's minions are not evil, just capricious. It is encouraging for me that not all supernatural beings are evil, you know? Madeleine always impressed that upon me."

"Of course they're not all evil," said Erika, selecting a twig for the snowman's arm. "They're just a different type of being." She smiled. "And you are not tainted, sister, you just have different abilities."

At that moment, Prince Gerd and Ralph the aspiring guardsman came trudging through the snow towards them. Kori ran through the snow to greet them, wanting to hug them each in turn, her bare feet leaving perfect footprints in the white mantle.

"Great to see you recovering so well, Kori," said Gerd as she hugged him. "I hope you'll be all better soon." She held his gaze for a moment, wishing her mask had more to show than its one bland expression. His nose and cheeks were flushed a rosy pink due to the cold.

"Thank you, my prince," she said softly. "The mask comes off today."

She hugged Ralph. "We'll be back together in the guard tomorrow then," said Ralph. "I heard Vereticus thinks the other wolf cultists may be skulking around somewhere in this province. But you'll howl at them and they'll run off, tails between their legs."

Kori chuckled placing her hands on his shoulders, looking into his freckled face. "It'll be great to be serve alongside you again."

Gerd was greeting Erika formally and Kori took Ralph's hand and introduced him and he bowed to Erika very low.

"This is Ralph, a fellow Royal Guard."

Erika gave a broader smile than she usually gave anyone besides Kori. "From the Golden Isles, I take it? And how did you come to serve the Dark Forest royalty, Ralph?"

Ralph bowed again. "I always wanted to travel Your Majesty and the Gruenwald guard were recruiting for promising young talent in my home city. My mother didn't want me to serve in so far off a place as the Dark Forest, but my father was proud. I've already seen amazing things in the Dark Forest." His green eyes flickered to Kori for an instant as he said that. Gazing at Ralph, she thought she could agree with his mother. She herself was unsure about what the best way to split her time between Madeleine and her sister might be.

Erika gave her oblique smile. "Don't you miss them? Don't you wonder if you can spend your whole life apart from them?"

"I've only been in the Dark Forest since summer and my eyes are still big from gazing at the world. But who knows what the future will hold? I defer to the wisdom of others who know me." He appealed to Gerd: "Am I going to turn into a sober older man who says, 'my roaming days are over?'"

"You? I doubt it," said Gerd.

Ralph turned to Kori next. "Can we defeat the Wolf Cult before the solstice, my Lady? If so, then I can visit home with a clear conscience when the festival comes around."

"I hope so, I really hope so," Kori replied.

00O00

That afternoon it was time for Kori's mask to be removed. Erika sat on a chair next to Rudolph in the surgery room while Vereticus donned his gloves.

"The moment of truth," he said gravely. Kori felt her heart flutter with anticipation mixed with misgiving. Would her face have healed?

Vereticus gripped the mask and pulled. As it came off, Kori felt as though a weight were lifted from her and her face suddenly felt very cold as it was exposed to the air for the first time in days.

"Success!" cried Vereticus.

"Oh Kori, you're as beautiful as ever," said Erika, her voice vibrating with relief.

Kori touched her cheek gingerly. Her face did feel very tender. She would need to apply her special moisturiser. "Thank you, Vereticus. Now I can get on with my mission to heal your son."

"Yes, the mission," said Erika, her expression unreadable once more as she turned to Rudolph. "I would love to know every little thing about it, uncle." She turned to Vereticus. "I thank you for your service, kind Sir." Vereticus bowed. "I would also like to hear everything you know that concerns the Wolf Cult and my sister, too."

At Erika's insistence, Vereticus stood before the three Sommernachts in his study and began to brief them. "The Lady Korina has worked out a way the Wolf Demon might be banished, but to do so, it will be necessary to find and eradicate the three remaining cultists and perform a spell using their five rings. As a demon, only Korina stands a chance at carrying it out."

"A mission fraught with peril, uncle," said Erika, turning to Rudolph. She was wearing that expression that Kori now recognised as her determined neutral face. The one she wore when she really wanted to conceal her true feelings.

Rudolph looked uncomfortable. "This was a condition for the Regent making Kori legitimate, Erika. I helped him see how her unique talents could serve the realm. The matter of the Wolf Cult decided him."

"I have a duty both as a Sommernacht and as a healer," said Kori. "If banishing the Wolf Demon will heal Vereticus' son, then that is what I am bound to do. There can be no question about it."

"Yes. Duty," said Erika softly.

00O00

Kori was able to join her sister and the Princes at the main banqueting table at lunch the next day. Rudolph and Vereticus did not join them and Heidi, the lady wife of Vereticus had the role of hostess. Siegfried took umbrage at this.

"Some host," he complained. "Absenting himself at his own pleasure. And some ambience. We could have found more cheer in a graveyard than in this place. What way is this to entertain royalty, Heidi?"

"Shush," hissed Gerd who sat next to Siegfried.

Lady Heidi was a silver haired older lady. Kori could see that she looked subdued because she was sad about her son's illness and her heart went out to her.

"Oh you shush," said Siegfried, unperturbed. "Dani and I are inclined to eat elsewhere – somewhere with better service." Dani, Siegfried's taster who sat on his other side, glanced at him apprehensively.

"Is anything not to his Highness' satisfaction?" asked Heidi. But her words were spoken half-heartedly and she seemed to be gazing into the distance.

"Quite a lot isn't," said Siegfried. "Your husband could show some grit – like me. I suppose it's what one expects from a bookworm who married his old tutor. What does that make you, Heidi? A cradle snatcher? Are you thirty years his senior?"

"Only fifteen," said Heidi absently.

Siegfried shook his head. The sunlight streaming in through the diamond patterned windows glinted off his fiery hair. He narrowed his luminescent green-blue eyes. "Huh. I can see the pursuit of knowledge meant everything to him and he married you for what more you could teach."

"Don't be so impertinent to a lady," said Gerd angrily.

Kori glanced quickly from one to the other and then at Erika whose expression was unreadable.

"Who asked your opinion?" said Siegfried giving Gerd his supercilious sneer. He turned back to Heidi. "I tell you, show some grit. There's no need to mope just because your son is sick."

At this, tears appeared in Heidi's blue eyes and she arose and swept from the room. Kori was on her feet in an instant and keeping pace with Heidi as she swept down the corridor, tears rolling down her cheeks. "Dear Heidi, don't cry," Kori urged. "I have vowed on my role as a healer to banish the Wolf Demon. Its curse of transformation worked by magic, there was nothing surgical about it, so it can be reversed if the demon is banished. Vereticus and my uncle are both wise and they agree that as another demon, I can do it."

Heidi stopped. Kori gently touched her arm, anxious to offer comfort.

"Then you must see my son, dear one," said Heidi, her voice still sounding close to choking. "As the healer you must see your patient."

"Indeed, I ought," said Kori gravely.

Heidi led Kori down a side passage and into a tiny indoor garden, like a room with a glass dome for a roof and a grassy floor. "Hold," she said, catching Kori's arm.

Kori took a sharp intake of breath. There, chained to a stake in the center of the sparse little lawn was a strange creature – one with the proportions of a man, but covered in wolf fur from head to toe. Heidi strode over to the figure who strained on his leash. She scratched him behind the ear and he gave a panting breath. His eyes flickered to Kori who saw that they were just like human eyes – piercing blue.

"I – I see now… the Wolf Mage is dead, so the transformation halted at this stage…" stammered Kori. "It can now be reversed. I will not stop until I have found a cure. Please bear this in mind, dear Heidi."

Heidi had stopped crying now and Kori felt better. "I have complete faith in your good intentions, dearest," she said.

Kori had known that she was doubly bound to her quest, but now her resolve burned all the brighter.