The Simbul's gift - Lynn Abbey [127]
If that were the worst injury they carried out of this day, they'd be very lucky.
Rizcarn would have marched them all day without rest, but noon found everyone flagged and slouched on the ground. Bro was pale. He leaned against a tree, holding his side with his eyes tightly closed.
Ignored as she approached, Alassra touched Bro's arm to get his attention. "I'll take a look at that again."
Sullen and graceless, Bro pulled off his shirt. Alassra didn't need magic to see that something was wrong. The cautery burns were raw again and weeping blood; the holes were swollen and nearly black. The one in the front showed a fresh gouge where he'd cut it with her poison-proof knife.
"You did your best," he said, fitting his arm into the sleeve again. "It doesn't hurt… much."
"Did I say I was finished?"
"I did, Chayan." He glowered at the hand Alassra laid on his arm. "Let go of me."
The Simbul was going to heal him, with or without his permission, fully and unsubtly, but without an audience. She'd charm his will, if she needed to, to get him away from the other Cha'Tel'Quessir. "They need cleansing, Ebroin. At least let me wash them. There's a pool upstream."
"No. Not again."
"Ebroin-" Alassra readied a mild compulsion.
He relented before she had to use it and sat miserably on a rock while she poured clear water over his burns.
"It would be easier if we were in the water."
The spell Alassra wanted to use, a spell of her own devising that converted the raw magical power of wizardry into healing, would be easier to conceal if they were both up to their necks in water.
"No."
"Well, I'm getting in the water. It'll be cooler and maybe drier, too."
"As you-"
Alassra kicked off her sandals and leapt into the pool. She hit the water like a rock and drenched Bro where he sat.
–"Wish." He swiped his hair one-handed and started to walk away. "I'm going."
"Ebroin, behave yourself. Those holes of yours need cool water. Lots of it. Get over here."
"Or what? You'll cast a spell on me?"
"I might, Ebroin. You never know. I might have to do all manner of things, but all I want to do is get the fire out of those wounds of yours."
The Simbul had seen more enthusiastic criminals on their way to the Velprintalar gallows, but he came, took off his boots-her boots-and his belt-with her knife on it. He stood on the rock and stayed there. She hooked an arm behind his knees.
"Oh, Ebroin," she complained as she pulled him into the water. "You're enough to make a grown woman cry."
While Bro struggled, Alassra loosed the spell that Elminster-with his usual flair for overblown language- nicknamed the synostodweomer. The water churned around them and glowed with rainbow colors. On the bank, a willow tree became an incandescent torch that flashed and died in an eye blink. Whatever one called the spell, it wasn't subtle, but it was effective, and exhausting.
Bro was stunned. Alassra held him upright in the water and caught her own breath.
"What happened?" he murmured in her ear.
He wasn't the only one asking that question. The Cha'Tel'Quessir, with Rizcarn leading them, were coming.
"Relkath protects," Alassra told them. "He sacrificed a tree to heal your son's wounds."
She pushed Bro toward the bank where Rizcarn grabbed an arm and hauled him out of the water. Front and back, puckered scars marked where the arrow had pierced Bro's hide. The cautery burns were smooth skin a few shades darker than the rest of him. Rizcarn himself was awed and speechless.
"Relkath protects," Alassra repeated the phrase she'd heard often enough around the camp. "Zandilar didn't want your son to die."
One by one, the Cha'Tel'Quessir touched Bro's scars. Several of them