The Gates of Night_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [14]
“Heal her,” he said.
“What?” Lei didn’t sound pleased.
“You said you made a healing charm. I don’t need it. So heal her.”
Lei hesitated, and Daine put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m not asking you to like her, Lei. But the woman helped save you from the firebinders. She risked her life for us—less than a day after I beat her bloody myself. She was guarding our back when this happened.”
Lei said nothing, and they stood in silence. Daine wondered what was going through her mind. Gerrion’s betrayal? “Lei,” he said at last. “Please.”
She nodded and broke away from him, kneeling next to the drow woman. Lei took a silver coin from her purse and passed it over the injured woman, starting at her feet and slowly moving toward her head. A faint, resonant chime filled the chamber, and the multitude of cuts began to fade. The power of the charm was limited, and only a few of the injuries were completely healed. But deep gashes became shallow wounds, and signs of infection disappeared.
The chime came to an end. The drow woman appeared to be sleeping, and Daine studied her. She was unquestionably elven, with fine features, large almond-shaped eyes, and long, pointed ears. Like most of the other elves Daine had encountered, she was short and slender—athletic, but built for speed instead of strength. Where most elves had light complexions, this woman’s skin was pitch black, a shade far darker than he’d ever seen on a human. This darkness was broken up by a web of pale white tattoos, abstract but almost hypnotic in their complexity. Her long hair was the color of moonlight, silvery-white and shimmering in the reflected flame. This cloak of hair covered more than her actual clothing. Vambraces made from some opalescent shell covered her forearms, and she wore shin-guards made from the same material. Aside from this armor, she wore a short, dark loincloth and a few bands of leather wrapped across her torso. Two short scabbards dangled from this makeshift harness, but her knives must have been left behind at the monolith.
The worst of her wounds were healed, and her breathing was slow and even. But her eyes remained closed, and she did not move.
“Lei?” Daine said.
“The charm’s exhausted. If she’s still unconscious, there’s nothing more I can do.” Lei bent to look more closely at her patient.
“She is conscious,” Pierce said.
“And angry.” The voice was rough, the accent strange, the words blending together … anangry. The woman’s eyes opened, pure silver-white with no trace of iris or pupil.
And then everything went black.
The unnatural darkness was deep, but not complete. Daine could still see the vague shapes of Pierce and Lei in the shadows. But the drow woman had vanished, disappearing the instant the darkness fell.
“Draw your weapons.” The dark elf spoke with a low, lyrical cadence, but an occasional pause suggested that she was not entirely comfortable with the common tongue. “You should not die unarmed.”
Lei’s never going to let me hear the end of this, Daine thought. He could see motion in the shadows—Pierce raising his bow. But Daine wasn’t going to play this game. “No,” he said. “Lei. Pierce. Stand down. We’re not fighting.”
“No?” The voice was all around them, seeming to emerge from the shadows. “Am I unworthy of your blade? Change your mind swiftly.”
The blow was a hammer in his back, a solid kick that landed directly on his spine, forcing him forward. He turned around, but the woman faded back into the shadows. Pain pulsed through his nerves, and he was tempted to give into his growing anger, to draw his sword and give this woman the battle she sought. Then the battlefield at Keldan Ridge flashed through his mind. This woman might be a stranger, but they’d fought the same foe. He’d lost too many of his comrades-in-arms over the last two years to give up on one now—even one who considered him an enemy.
“Why are you doing this? We saved your life.”