The Bonemender's Choice Part 1

THE.

BONEMENDER'S CHOICE.

HOLLY BENNETT.

For Kate and Wally, who have cheered me on this adventure from my first hesitant steps, and provisioned me along the way with everything from pirate books to my very own tiny Elvish muse.

Acknowledgments.

With the kind permission of the great Canadian musician and songwriter Willie P. Bennett, I have given a couplet from his song "Brave Wings" to Feolan.

Note: These two maps are drawn to different scales.

CHAPTER ONE.

GABRIELLE GAZED DOWN at the little village. It was just a handful of modest cabins, the farthest one a charred mess of caved-in blackened timbers. At least, she thought, the wind had been in their favor, and the fire had not spread to the other dwellings.

Jacques, Gabrielle's guide, had already ridden ahead, eager to arrive with his help. She hoped she could help. Burns were not only terribly painful, they were among the most difficult injuries to recover from. If she could save the girls-and by the guide's account, she was not certain she could-there was no telling what sort of life they would face.

As Cloud carried Gabrielle into the village, Jacques pointed her toward one of the little cabins. "Aline's waiting," he said. The door opened, and the woman ran to meet them, weepy with mingled hope and fear. Smudged still from the fire, hair mussed, she bore the hollow haunted look of new grief.

"Thank the G.o.ds you're here. My poor girlies. My poor little girlies!"

She stopped in front of a small cabin-"My mother's house," she explained-and paused in the doorway.

"I hope I haven't done wrong," she burst out. "Old Anna, that's my neighbor, she told me to coat 'em up in b.u.t.ter-"

"Tell me you didn't." The words were out before Gabrielle could stop them, and she rued her own brusqueness. The popular folk remedy was harmless enough on superficial burns, but with the injuries these children must have, it would be disaster. The thought of trying to clean rancid goat-b.u.t.ter from open wounds filled her with despair. But the last thing this woman needed was a scolding.

"I didn't," Aline said. "I couldn't bring meself to, on that raw terrible..." Again, sobs overtook her as she pushed open the door. "I just poured cool water over their little legs. It's all I could manage."

"You did exactly right!" said Gabrielle. "I couldn't ask for better." She laid a rea.s.suring hand on the woman's shoulder and felt it slump with relief, but she didn't linger. With the opening of the door, her mind had veered mid-flight to the sounds coming from within. There was no screaming-not any longer-but rather a stream of hopeless gasping mews exhaled on every breath.

"They're quieter now," offered an older woman-Aline's mother, no doubt-from within the single room of the house. "The pain must be easing."

Gabrielle knew better. The pain would not be less-if anything, it would make itself felt more fiercely as the first shock wore off. The girls were simply exhausted, unable to summon more than this feeble expression of agony. She knelt beside the two small bodies that lay together, stomach-down, on a pallet in the middle of the house.

Gabrielle's eyes traveled over their light brown braids, pale freckled faces turned to each other, thin stick arms. Their eyes, dull with pain, were a matching hazel brown. Identical twins, they were, not more than four or five years old. The burn searing across the backs of their legs was a mess of red flesh and black char, but she knew she must leave it for now. First things first. Shock, lung damage, infection-any one of these could kill children so young.

Their pulse ran faint and rapid, their breathing the same. The airways, though, seemed fairly clear-only an occasional cough or raspy breath. They'd kept low to the ground, had perhaps been spared the worst of the smoke. Gabrielle laid a hand first on one thin back, then on the other, as she closed her eyes and let the world fade away. In the deep quiet she created around herself, the healing light kindled in her hands, and she went with it, sinking her awareness deep inside her patients. Yes, their lungs were doing fine. But the children's strength was nearly gone, seeping away with each panting breath. Deep in their chests, Gabrielle felt the twin hearts laboring too fast, too weak. The trauma, the pain, the terrible injury itself-it was too much for such small bodies to withstand. The girls wavered on the thin dividing line between life and death. Soon they would be beyond returning.

Gabrielle had been in that gray land herself. She knew it could be called a kindness to let the girls slip away, free of the pain and the fear. But she thought too of Aline's stricken careworn face, of the girls' father braving fire itself to save them. If she could bring them back, she would.

She sat up. "Aline? I need your help. Your mother's too."

The girls' grandmother was at her side already. "Anything. And call me Colette."

Gabrielle was checking the burn now. It was as deep and ugly as she had ever seen, eating in some places right through the skin into muscle tissue, but she saw cause for hope as well. The beam had fallen square across the girls' thighs, managing against all likelihood to miss both knee and hip joints. That would be a blessing if they managed to pull through.

"You've done a good job at rinsing off the wound," said Gabrielle, "but it needs to be cleaned more. You see here"-she pointed-"where a piece of nightgown has burned on, or here where the skin has made a blackened crust?" Her clear green eyes met Aline's fearful brown ones, held them steady. "These need to be pulled away. It won't be easy, and it will hurt your daughters. But if you can do this, then I can be working at the same time to strengthen them and help them to endure it, and they will have a better chance of living.

"I think," she added quietly, "that this may be their only chance of living. Can you do it?"

Aline's eyes flinched over the crusty surface of her daughters' legs. As if in antic.i.p.ation, one little girl gave a sudden cry and thrashed feebly.

Aline glanced at her mother, pulled her mouth into a determined line and nodded. The older woman spoke for both: "Whatever's needed." Gabrielle pulled out her tweezers and scalpels and showed them how she wanted it done. Then she rummaged in her bag once more for the two big jars she had brought along for this very purpose.

"What's that, then?" asked Aline, a little suspiciously.

"This is honey," replied Gabrielle. "A treatment I learned from the Elves. It fights infection and seals over the wound to protect it. Much, much better than b.u.t.ter. When you have cleaned things up as best you can-you won't get everything, but try to clean away any charring bigger than, say, your fingernail-then I want you to drizzle the honey over the entire area. It will make a sticky mess, but I want every speck of that burn coated in honey."

"All right but..." Aline took a deep breath. "No offense to you, Lady, but I thought this is what you came here for? Will you not treat their wounds?"

"I will be treating their wounds from the inside," Gabrielle said. "I'm going to help their hearts to beat and their spirits to hold fast to the earth. It will look like I am asleep, but I will be working very hard to keep your girls alive. If you need me, call my name and I will awaken."

She expected-and got-the white-eyed, half-frightened look of wonder that came over the two women's faces. Until she had met the Elves, she was the only one she knew with this power to heal from within.

"What are your daughters' names?" she asked gently. If she needed to call to a fading soul, a name might make all the difference.

It was the grandmother who answered. "This one here is Mira, the other Marie."

Gabrielle had to smile. "All right then, we'll start with..."

She looked at the two small faces, alike as two chicks. How could she choose? While I help one, the other could slip away, she thought, and that was beyond bearing. She slipped her fingers around each girl's skinny wrist, counting first one heartbeat, then the other. The same.

In fact...She checked again. Yes, their heart rates were almost perfectly synchronized. She watched the girls' backs rise and fall, matching each other breath for breath. She caught her own breath in sudden excitement.

They were twins. As close to one body as you could get in two people. She would work on them both as one. If they were going to live, they would live together.

Gabrielle sat herself by the girls' heads and laid a hand on each neck.

"Give me time to strengthen them before you start-say a quarter-bell," she told her helpers. "Then get started." And she closed her eyes, summoned the light and allowed her mind to flow into two twin sisters named Mira and Marie.

CHAPTER TWO.

EARS RINGING WITH the clash of his own hammer, sweat pouring down his bare chest from the fierce heat, Derkh was in a world to himself. He loved it when he got to make something that took real craftsmanship-something beyond the stirrups and horseshoes, plowshares and hoe ends that filled his days.

He had been working on this set of fine hunting knives-a short, back-curved skinning blade with a built-in gut hook and a long straight blade for killing and disjointing-for days now. Commissioned by a well-to-do sheep rancher for his son's fourteenth birthday, it was a job that, done right, could bring in more. Derkh meant to do it right.

He plunged the skinning knife, still red with heat, into the bucket. Water hissed and steam billowed. It was a little drama he had reenacted countless times, one he always enjoyed.

Only when he pulled the blade out and squinted along its length did he notice the woman.

Not that she was easy to miss. He remembered her instantly- she had served him ale at a local inn, and he had marked how she held herself like a queen despite her load of mugs and the foam dribbling down her arms.

She stood now in the entranceway to the smithy, watching him coolly. Bronze hair, tawny skin, amber eyes-if a gold statue came to life, Derkh thought, it would have her coloring. Then she walked-no, prowled -across the yard toward him, and any resemblance to a statue vanished. She was like a great tawny cat, lithe and beautiful and dangerous.

"Help you?" Derkh armed sweat from his forehead and tried to look self-a.s.sured.

She smiled, showing perfect white teeth. "You are young one. Is good."

"I'm sorry?" Her words were heavily accented, much stronger than his own telltale Greffaire overtones.

"Mistress say, deal with young one. Old smith is not much worth."

Derkh winced. It was true his master's work was becoming sloppy. His eyesight was not what it had been, nor his steadiness of hand. These days Derkh tried to steer Theo toward "minding the shop," but he wasn't always successful.

"What can I do for you?"

Again the smile. G.o.ds, it was blinding.

"You can fix?" She held up a bridle, or rather a former bridle. Derkh took a look. Been left outside, by the looks of it. Half the bit and its hardware were rusted-that would have to be replaced. Couple of bridle rings too. The other side was fine though, and the leather just needed a good cleaning and oiling.

"Yes, of course," he replied. "It won't be that much cheaper than getting a whole new bridle though-I'll need to replace about half the fittings."

She shrugged. "They want to fix. Is not my say-so."

"All right. I can have it done tomorrow afternoon."

Business concluded, his self-consciousness returned. He felt naked, truth to tell, standing in front of this glory of a woman. It didn't help that he was half-naked, stripped to the waist but for the leather ap.r.o.n and forearm cuffs that provided some protection from the sparks that showered from his hammer.

He risked a glance. She hadn't moved.

"Is there something else?"

Those strange eyes pinned him. He had never seen eyes that color in all his life. They reminded him now of an eagle's, fierce and golden. He felt, fleetingly, like a raptor's prey before the strike.

"Your name."

"What?"

"Your name," she repeated impatiently. "What is name?"

"Oh, sorry. Derkh," he mumbled. Eternal night, you sound like a half-wit, he scolded himself. Speak up.

"My name is Derkh," he shouted. I am a half-wit, he despaired and gave up.

"I am Yolenka." Yolenka flashed him another brilliant smile, a smile to bless the entire earth and send a flash of heat right down to his toes. "I am happy to be meeting you."

YOLENKA RETURNED THE next afternoon to pick up the bridle, and later that week with a couple of saucepans needing new handles and again to pick them up. Each time she managed to arrive when Derkh was alone in the smithy, and each time she stayed longer than the time before. He began to get over his natural shyness and look forward to her visits. But it never occurred to him that she was actually interested in him until the night he found her waiting in front of the shop at the end of the day.

"You are finished with working?" she demanded.

"Yes," he agreed, wishing he'd washed up more thoroughly. He always rinsed off and stuck his head under Theo's pump before heading home, but only a proper bath could really wash away a day at the forge.

"I have night free also," she announced, with a delighted flash of teeth. "You eat with me!"

"h.e.l.lO, MY BEAUTY." Tristan's extravagant kisses-one for Rosalie, one for the gentle swell of belly where their third baby was growing-would have fooled almost anyone. They didn't fool her. His mind was somewhere else.

"What is it, Tris?"

Tristan, still wrapped about her middle, gave her a startled look and straightened. "G.o.ds above, Rosie. I pray I never have some evil secret to keep from you. You are like a truth-sniffer from the old tales!"

Rosalie grinned, triumphant. "Well?"

"Well, I think I'd like to greet my wife and get all the way into my house before plunging into the news."

He got a little way in-as far as the first salon-before the interrogation continued. This time he didn't hide his concern.

"It's these raiders, Rosie. There's been another strike down the coast-that's three in a month, after such a long time with next to none. And it wasn't just a quick hit on the richest houses-they stripped Cote Noire village of every tool, coin and head of livestock to be found. I have a feeling we're heading into another spate of trouble, like Dominic had a few years before the war."

Tristan had fought in that brief war when Greffier, the country north of the Krylian Mountains, had invaded the Krylian Basin seven years before. That event had forever separated his life into "before the war" and "after the war." Rosalie, though, had spent that year safely on the coast with her father. The war barely seemed real to her. Tarzine pirate raids, however, had been part of the backdrop of her childhood. Though the raiders had never been bold enough to raid the merchant warehouses at Blanchette, preferring the less rich but defenseless villages and towns nestled along the Verdeau coast, the threat of a pirate attack had been a favorite subject of conversation among the wealthy citizens who often sat at her father's table.

At the time, her father's a.s.surances that the pirates would not harm her had been enough. Now Rosalie's heart went out to the villagers who had endured the terror of the attack and who might have lost loved ones as well as their means of livelihood.

"There must be some way to defend against them, Tris," she declared. "They cannot be allowed to waltz in here and help themselves whenever they wish!"

"My thoughts exactly, Rosie girl," said Tristan.

Three times a mother, she thought fondly, and he still calls me his "girl."

"We don't have the troops to fortify the entire coastline," he continued, "but there has to be some way..." His words were interrupted by the sound of small feet sprinting down the hallway, followed by a heavier tread and a reproving voice.

"Papa! I knew I heard you come home!" A small towheaded boy burst into the room and hurled himself into Tristan's lap as though for protection. He was followed by a breathless nurse with a curly-haired toddler on her hip.

"Now, Romy, I told you to wait-I'm sorry m'Lord. He got away from me."

"He's good at that, isn't he?" Tristan agreed with a grin. He ruffled the boy's hair, and five-year-old Jerome-named after his paternal grandfather, killed in that same war-smiled fetchingly at his nurse, certain now of his refuge.