Camwynya’s face showed her shock when she uncovered the wound. “It’s not healed at all—who looked at it first?”
Arianya could not remember. Someone, she thought, had helped her stanch the bleeding, laid folded cloth on it, wrapped the bandages around, but all she clearly remembered was struggling to replace them … when? The next morning, surely, but she could not remember that, either. She murmured that. Camwynya’s eyes narrowed.
“It’s definitely poison, and one I don’t know. Arvid, do you?”
Arvid moved closer to the bed. “We thought it was elven in the Guild. Marshal-General mentioned kuaknomi.”
Arianya looked up—the other faces seemed strange—still talking, some looking at her, some at one another, all shadowed, this cheekbone and that brow picked out in yellow candlelight.
“Kuaknomi.” Camwynya leaned over her. “Marshal-General, we must probe the wound, see if anything’s left inside. You know how often their weapons are designed to leave a fragment in the wound. I fear the effect of numbwine, as weak as you are.”
“Light,” Arianya said. “Need light.”
Light blazed in the room—Camwynya’s light, Gird’s light. She blinked against it. She felt the bed move as several dragged it out into the room and then hands on her shoulders. Camwynya laid one hand over Arianya’s heart and the other on the wound itself. Pain stabbed deep—deeper than the wound itself, it felt like. Arianya closed her eyes, trying not to struggle against it … and still there was light, shadowless, pure, unending.
And another face, the one she had imagined so often but never seen, emerged from the light, looking at her … steady gray eyes, endurance and compassion in the lines of his face.
In the haze of light and pain, Arianya murmured, “I’m sorry.”
The brows went up, and the mouth quirked. “For others’ misdeeds?”
“For my mistakes.” She was aware that she was not speaking aloud, that somewhere else others were working on her body, but the pain had eased … had vanished … leaving her here in the light with the old, stoop-shouldered balding man in his faded blue shirt.
He shrugged. “Everyone makes mistakes. I made mistakes. Are you leaving my service?”
“Leaving …”
“You allowed none to care for you. Why?”
“I did not deserve—”
He grunted. “What you deserve is not at issue. Others deserve a good Marshal-General.”
“A good Marshal-General would have found more paladin candidates … would have foreseen this trouble … would have …”
“Been a god?” A bite of sarcasm in that. “Neither of us, Arianya Girdsdotter, is a god. I was a good-enough leader when I lived in that room; I am a good-enough messenger now. Make up your mind: Will you leave my service, or will you stay?”
Faced with that face, she had only one answer. “I will stay.”
“Good. We must talk again another time. You do not always listen well, Arianya. Be well.” She felt the touch of a hand on her forehead—his?—and the brilliant light slowly dimmed. She felt pain again and heard other voices.
“It’s stuck in the bone—I can’t get a grip.”
“Try this.”
“It’s so small—”
She heard the gritty sound of something being pulled from bone and a gasp from someone nearby.
“What is that? Black—”
A door banged, and other footsteps came closer, running. Through her closed eyelids light glowed red. “Who is it—ahhh.”
“Paks.” That was Camwynya … and Paks was here? Here? She had been gone … a long time, Arianya thought. “We think it was an iynisin attack. I just pulled this from the bone—and look.”
“I see. If they used what they did on me, then the only healing I know is Kuakkgani … and there’s no Kuakgan nearer than the southern mountains … perhaps in western Tsaia.”
“Surely we can do something.”
“We will do our best.”
Paks leaned closer; Arianya could smell horse, leather, dust, and then as suddenly as before she slid into another place … this time not white light but green.
A green glade, spattered with sunlight piercing the tree canopy overhead. Purple flowers gave off a fragrance spicier than violets; a bright-colored bird flew past, a winged jewel when the sunlight touched it: glittering green, red, blue, purple. Out from the forest shade came a strange cat—gray spots on a snow-white coat, eyes of palest blue. It paced up to her, rose on its hind legs and set its forepaws gently on her shoulders, extended a pink tongue and licked her across the face.