Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [194]
The Iezu nodded.
“Can you block it off? Divert its flow, maybe?” The Iezu looked dubious. “Anything, Karril! The currents here are too strong for me to Heal with. Is there any way you can help? If not and he nodded toward Tarrant, ”—he’ll die.“
The Iezu drew in a deep breath, deliberately melodramatic. “I can try,” he said at last. “Although I can’t promise—”
“Just do it!” Damien snapped. The Hunter’s lips were faintly blue: a bad, bad sign. “And hurry!”
The Iezu disappeared. Not fading slowly, as he normally did, but snuffed out like a candle flame in a wind. Apparently to manipulate the fae he had to be in his natural form... whatever the hell that was. Doesn’t matter, Damien thought grimly. Whatever works. He sat down by Tarrant’s side and gripped the man’s shoulder in reassurance. “You’re not going to die,” he whispered. “Not after all I went through to bring you here. You’re going home, dammit.” And then he saw the Hunter’s eyes widen in surprise, and he knew by that sign that the currents had changed. For the better, he prayed, as he prepared himself for Working. If not, they would both be dead soon enough.
With a deep breath for courage he reached down into the currents, grasping hold of Shaitan’s power—
Or rather, tried to. But there was nothing there. Had Karril failed him? Again he reached out with his mind, in the manner he had been taught, and again he utterly failed to make contact. But this time there was something there. A faint slithering of power, just enough to confirm that the currents were active. There was enough fae coursing around Tarrant’s body to Heal him, but Damien couldn’t seem to access it.
What the hell was wrong?
Again and again he tried, until a hot sweat broke out across his skin from the strain of his efforts. But the fae was like a wriggling eel, that slithered out of his mental grasp each time he tried to close in on it. Beside him Tarrant was gasping for breath, and his lips and eyes were shadowed with a deathly blue tint; he clearly didn’t have much time left. Again Damien tried to tackle the elusive earth-power, pouring everything he had into the effort. And for an instant he seemed to make real contact with it. For an instant he could taste what was wrong, and though he didn’t know its cause, the result was all too clear. The fae could be Worked, all right, but at a terrible price to the Worker. Was Damien Vryce willing to risk death to do this Healing, or was his own survival too precious for him to make such a commitment? He looked down at Tarrant, so very close to the gateway of death himself that his skin had taken on the color of a corpse, and felt an upwelling of cold determination in that place where the heat of fear might have taken root. You were willing to give up your life on Shaitan to save mankind from Calesta. You were willing to face Hell for that. I can’t let you die now, atthe very threshold of salvation. I can’t rob you of the chance to make your peace with God at last . . . not even to save my own skin.
—And the fae roared into him, currents ten times more hot than any he had Worked before. For a moment it was all he could do not to drown in it, not to lose himself in the raging flow. Then, at last, he managed to take hold of it with his will and give it form. A Seeing. A Knowing. The tools he needed to see into Tarrant’s flesh, to analyze it, to alter....
The Hunter’s heart took shape before him—no, about him—red muscle pounding out a feverish rhythm, a living sea that throbbed about his head as the spasms that drove it pulsed more and more desperately. He struggled to concentrate on the task at hand, and not let the hot sea sweep him away. Mitral valve, Tarrant had said. Damien searched for it, found it, and Knew it. The thin flap of tissue had thickened across most of its surface, and as he watched it struggle to close time and time again, he could see how the damage crippled it, how its failure to seal completely allowed blood to now back the way it had come. That was his immediate target, clearly.