Chapter 6: What the Light cannot heal..

Run run run….

To their right the walls of Stromgarde rose threatening into the night crowned in faint glimmer by the moonlight shining on their tops.
Panting, they scrambled over broken stones and tree roots. Their boots sent a shower of pebbles into the valley below at each movement and Lainné stopped for a second to listen for sounds of pursuit - to catch her breath, really.

Her mind worked frantically beyond that (how lucky they had done some reconnaissance over the previous day, else she would have never been able to find her way in the darkness; the Syndicate had shadow casters and necromancers! among their numbers – Light, was the world going to an end with so many cults springing up like mushrooms after heavy rain – and WHY DID HE HAVE TO DO IT, STUPID STUPID MAN?)

They had managed to sneak into Stromgarde and then up in the keep without being noticed. A wizdard’s robe – the body they have discarded in the city moat – and some phrases muttered with Arathi accent had done the trick. There was no discipline among the Syndicate men – and apparently no one had seen the need for night patrols. Two or three inconvenient guards had swiftly been acquainted to death – she felt oddly grateful that Eireannan had taken the killing upon himself. Oh, she had grown used to the idea – there was no other way – but then she had never taken another human’s life before…

He had done it all swiftly and very efficiently – a few whispered shadow words for one – a dagger slipped into the heart of another. Even like that her hands felt soiled with blood. She wondered whether Eireannan had guessed how loathe she was of killing and didn’t want to risk their carefully crafted plan for a moment of weakness – or he had just decided to spare her the actual murder. Any way the responsibility was still there, just another burden on her shoulders…

A quick glance told Lainné he was falling behind. Damn it!

The bag she carried was filled with weird artifacts and scrolls of parchment – whatever they had managed to snatch from the keep, pressed as they had been. Answers, she thought wryly. Answers to questions, some of them as yet unasked.

The attack had come on the way out. A fireball missing her head by a very narrow margin, then hell unleashed. She didn’t really know whether she had managed to kill anyone this time – she just fought blindly - and like the total whim she was let her back unguarded…
She hadn’t realized it, of course. Not until she was tumbling on the rough stone pavement on knees and elbows. The assassin’s short sword slashed the air exactly where her heart would have been if not for Eireannan throwing himself – himself – in between as shield. The blade sliced through his coat – and not only, he had gasped in pain – before she had the time to whisper the words of protection.

Run, just run, you bloody woman!

He pretended it was nothing – a mere scratch. Didn’t even let her take a look at it. But he staggered more often now as they had started climbing.
The night was dense, with thick clouds covering the waxing moon. Lainné poised her hearing again, listening intently. Nothing, except for her own savagely drumming heart and Eireannan’s ragged breath a couple of steps below.

She heard him curse softly when his boot slipped on the sharp edge of the rocks. He fought for every yard but he wouldn’t admit it – burn him, it was all her fault…her fault! She slid back to him, down the slope, moving carefully – the wind seemed to carry even the smallest sound over vast distances.

“We’re close” she heard him whisper. She circled his waist with her arm and he tried to push it away instinctively. “I’m fine, I’ve told you so.”

“No, you are not.” She nearly stumbled when he suddenly gave up and leaned against her shoulder more heavily than he had obviously intended. He seemed relieved that he did not have to pretend anymore. “That damned cave should be here somewhere…”

“There”…Eireannan pointed over her head to their right. Lainné started towards the spot he had indicated – yes, he was right – and he strained to keep up the pace.

It was an even smaller opening than the one in which they had spent the first night. Lainné fumbled her way into the darkness, scrambling for the lantern and the tinder she had hidden not far from the entrance. Pale, trembling light bathed the humid walls. She set the lantern on a rocky outcrop and turned to face Eireannan.

“Sit.”

He opened his mouth to protest but she shoved him down, and it didn’t take much strength to do so. She peeled off his coat and her fingers dug skilfully into his shirt, pulling the layers of cloth away to inspect the wound in his back. It was ugly: the sword had entered under his right shoulder blade; luckily, Eireannan’s movement had deterred its downwards direction, so instead of touching any vital organ it had just spanned a deep thirty centimeters gash across his ribs. There was enough blood for a slaughtered pig, Lainné thought grimly – her stomach seemed to knot on itself at the sight of physical injuries – and the edges of the wound were swollen with the skin burning angrily around them.

“Poison, of course…” Pressing bloodied fingers to her lips she considered the extent of the inflammation, and then rummaged in the pockets of her cloak for a vial of anti-venom.

“Drink this”, she said, pressing the vial into his hand. Eireannan lifted his head to look at her - Light, he was white as freshly bleached linen - and Lainné snapped. “It won’t do you any worse than the poison. Drink it!”
He grimaced at the taste but she didn’t notice. She just focused on the wound. Contrary to what people usually thought, there was no “recipe” for a healing. All the training and study priests did, could not teach one “how” to use the holy light. It was something you had to discover all alone. The training was merely a way to learn how empty yourself of thoughts and personal desires and serve as a vessel for that power. She could heal him without the anti-venom, of course. But using herbs and potions had long before become a second nature to her, an aid to concentration.
She blanked her mind and the light filled her. It spread under her palms reaching deep into the wound, to clean the poison and knit the flesh.

Eireannan let out a small whimper. Healing was always a slightly uncomfortable experience for the one at the receiving end. And probably a million times worse if the person happened to be a shadow wielder. But she knew no other way to get rid of that poison so he’d better endure it.

As the light faded, Lainné opened the eyes and studied her handiwork. The wound was only a red line now, easy to trace on the skin. Eireannan however was trembling like a leaf. With the tip of her fingers she felt other scars, much poorly healed – and shivered. Too many of them.

“I’ll make tea”, she said quietly, moving aside to unwrap the bundle he had placed in the morning in the back of the cave. Blanket, bags, a kettle. Eireannan nodded – he hadn’t stirred from the place in which she had pushed him down to begin with.

He watched silently as Lainné poured water into the kettle and started a small fire in the middle of their shelter. Immediately after that she started to industriously turn her pockets upside down, extracting three more vials and a roll of bandages.

“Get out of that shirt…” she commanded ever so softly. He had seen many a determined woman not to know it was useless to argue, so he unlaced the shirt and discarded it on the floor. Not without pausing to finger the tear in its back : he had been using up a lot of his luck lately.

Lainné knelt by his side without wasting any more words and set up to work in a very efficient manner.. Her hands were soft indeed, as Eireannan had imagined. She washed away the blood with a damp cloth, then applied some soothing ointment over the scar and bandaged it tightly. He could not see her face, yet something in her breathing told him she was still concerned.

“Thank you”, he said after a while.

“It’s the least I can do…” Lainné’s voice had a pained sound to it. “You took this wound instead of me. Why did you…”

“My life it’s not worth too much”, Eireannan interrupted. A very blunt statement, made in a blank tone. It was the truth. Yet it had been something more than that back there, in Stromgarde…an instinctive urge to protect her at all cost.

“Anyone’s life is…” She paused, realizing she was going to lecture him with some phrases of choice extracted from the Book of Wisdom. Instead of that she spoke one of the questions on her mind.

“I thought all warlocks …consorted with demons.”

“Most do…” Eireannan agreed. “Demonology is seen as a very…useful branch of study…I just don’t…like it.”

Lainné let out a sharp breath – her fingers fumbled with the bandage she was trying to fix in place over his chest.

“Then… there is that”, she added, gesturing towards his blood stained tunic. The glimmering silver pin was barely visible as it lay at Eireannan’s feet. “I also thought the Argent Dawn does not allow warlocks within its ranks.”

She had said “Argent Dawn” in a way that sounded a like “Holy Light”. Eireannan managed to smile.
“You’ve got keen eyes…” He didn’t show that in the open, not even in the Plaguelands, but he hadn’t been able to refrain himself from wearing it on the inside of his collar. It gave some meaning to everyday’s fight. More often than not, the only meaning. He gazed at the stones under his feet, shuffling his feet nervously. “They don’t. But…they don’t deny either a man’s right to do his little in the battle against the Scourge.”

“I’m finished.” Lainné announced silently. She stood eyeing the bandage critically.“You’re still shivering.” With an annoyed expression she felt his forehead with the back of the palm. “I don’t like this”, she muttered, not at all baffled by the glance he shot at her…”yet I’m sure I’ve cleansed all the poison…”

“Quite some skill you have.” His eyes had gone deadly cold again, Lainné thought, yet for a second, when talking of the Argent Dawn, there had been warmth there. Passion. Anger. A lot of emotions she did not understand.

“Sure”, she nodded. “I rolled a ton of bandages and brew buckets of ointments during the war. They didn’t allow me do anything more…no matter how good a healer…just kept me to rot on the border of Tirisfal.”

“Don’t speak of such things!” Eireannan cut her off abruptly. It took her a second to realize it was her unintended pun which had him so on edge. “And then…no wonder they didn’t take you on the battlefield. How old were you? Ten?”

“Seventeen.” Lainné was a picture of unruffled serenity. Most priests were barely in novice training at that age. “I think you should lie down now. Some tea will do you well.”

“Mmmh.” It hurt all over the body, anyway. Healing was not the most pleasant experience for a warlock. What he hadn’t expected though was the sheer amount of worry etched in Lainné’s face. “You’re running a fever”, she said softly.

One could drown in those dark eyes, Eireannan thought. Even a wretch such as himself.

“Why did you have to…?” Lainné started again, then stopped, noticing that the water was already steaming in the kettle over the fire. Tea. Make tea, she remembered. She would heal him good and that was that. His reasons were of no concern to her.
As she stalked away Eireannan’s hearing caught a growled oath – and a very nasty one.