Ember's End Page 7

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  There is water here. But how to get to it?

  She listened intently.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  Inhaling deeply and steeling herself against the pain, she faced the sound of dripping.

  Letting go of Smalls’ hand, she began crawling, in agony, along the moss-covered rock of this vast cavern. She couldn’t see well, and half the time she closed her eyes against the pain, but she crossed slowly till the sound was louder and the ground felt damper.

  At last Heather reached the trickle and reached out to feel for the drip. But her hand found a small pool. Though she could not see well by the scant light, the pool looked clear enough. She didn’t care about dirt at this point but bent and drank in gulps of the cool liquid. It had a mossy taste, almost vegetable in flavor, and she drank on till she could hold no more.

  Now, how to get some to Smalls? Maybe he had somehow been drinking from this pool after being dumped in here, half-alive. Maybe that’s how he had survived. She started to reach inside her satchel to find something to carry water in when she noticed a clay bowl on the rim of the pool.

  She frowned, gazing around in sudden suspicion. Then, as quickly as she could, Heather filled the bowl and carried it painfully back to Smalls. As she crawled, she thought that this bowl had likely been there for uncountable years, and it had surely been ages since anyone used it. She recalled Seven Mounds back in Nick Hollow and how Picket and Smalls had described the disused insides of those series of caves, complete with mundane household items like plates and cups.

  Reaching Smalls, she tilted his head up. An agonizing wrench in her wound caused her to nearly faint, but she managed to pour a little water into his mouth. He didn’t choke, and she eased his head back down and dropped the bowl onto the soft moss.

  She was out of breath, and an insistent weariness deepened till she could barely open her eyes.

  Heather knew she needed to examine the wound, or wounds, Smalls no doubt had, but she dreaded confirmation of his peril. And she knew her own wound was mortal. She could feel her life ebbing away.

  It won’t do to surrender, even here at the end. I must finish life as I have lived it, or have tried to live it.

  I am a healer.

  Heather had been trained by Emma to tend to herself first in any battle in which she was wounded. This command was so often repeated that it had become an automatic instinct. You must see to your own condition first, so that you may serve others best. So, with some hesitation, she tore away the matted fabric around her pierced middle and gazed with grief at her wound.

  There could be no doubt. It was fatal.

  Heather was dying.

  Tears came, but she reached for her satchel to apply some ointment and binding. That might slow the process and help her examine Smalls. She felt weak. So weak. But the water had helped, and she was determined to carry on till all hope—every last drop of it—was lost.

  She drew out Emma’s ointment and spread it liberally over her wound, recalling the last patient she had treated, Master Mills in Akolan. His was a perilous case too. She recalled how she had seen his twin at the Victory Day revolt the next day—so like him it was alarming. She wrapped her wound as best she could, though the wrap could not staunch the bleeding. Heather inhaled deeply, a cough catching her breath, then turned to Smalls.

  The small light above brightened, as if the clouds high outside were giving way to full sunshine, and a little trickle of light fell on Smalls. Maybe he had crawled to this spot for the scant heat of the sliver of sun. She opened his bloody shirt and saw the awful wound, now septic in its advanced stage. She fought down an urge to be sick. She was heartbroken but focused on doing what she could.

  Reaching inside her bag, she found Aunt Jone’s battered purse, and smiled. She drew out the necklace Smalls had given her, the torch bright on its pendant. She put it on. Then the emerald gem, the symbol of what had been his destiny. She raised the Green Ember and, kissing him gently, she clasped it around his neck. It hung over his heart.

  She tossed the small vial of tonic back inside and reached for Emma’s treatment. Black edges pushed into the center of her vision, and she blinked furiously as she fumbled with the satchel. Fighting to focus, she pushed away the insistent alarm of her body’s peril and worked on. She tore strips for binding, then found Emma’s remarkably potent tonic. But she had used this treatment many times and knew its virtues did not extend to wounds as far gone as these. It was no miracle elixir. Still, she poured some into her own mouth, and also Smalls’.

  The image of Master Mills appeared in her mind again, and she recalled the excitement with which she had been greeted at the District Four clinic the day after she had helped Doctor Hendow treat him and others. Then … the twin brother. She was growing dizzy. Heather believed there was a thread of something important just out of reach, but she could not lay hold of it. She swooned, catching herself just before she fell.

  Aunt Jone came to her mind. The old doe had been arrested for stealing Prester Kell’s “True Blue,” then later insisted she had finally found her long-sought-for cure. Heather thought of her own healthy arm, how it had healed remarkably well while in Akolan. Was it possible? Did Master Mills have no brother? Was it him there on the battlefield?

  The tonic. Aunt Jone’s tonic! She reached in again and dug out the small bottle. She poured several drops into Smalls’ awful wound, then more into his mouth. Stoppering the top, she felt a strange sensation.

  Fading. Paling.

  She felt certain that if she closed her eyes she would never open them again. But she could not—could not—keep them open.

  Heather touched the Green Ember at his chest. “You would have been a magnificent king,” she said, and she collapsed.

  The last thing Heather remembered was a guttural gasp from the far side of the cavern and the sound of tumbling rocks.

  Chapter Fifteen

  TOWER OF DREAMS

  Heather had always dreamed. But her dreams had increased in intensity and weight of meaning since she and Picket had become partisans in the cause.

  Now she seemed to see, through blurry vision, a scaly hand reaching out to touch a fallen rabbit’s chest, gathering into its slithering grip the glowing green gem at his neck. A thin whispering cackle and a darting tongue. “Sleep, or death?”

  The hand let go the gem and slipped into the shadows. A rumbling grind of stone on stone sounded from the dim recesses behind, and she gazed on the fallen, unmoving rabbit. A sob stuck in her throat, and despair descended on her like a sudden flood.

  The blurry vision faded to darkness.

  A vivid scene appeared in its place. She was back home in Nick Hollow with her family, and they were playing a familiar game of Father’s invention called Tower Wars. Using small wooden blocks Father had fashioned, she and Picket were building a tower on one side of the room near the fire, and Father was building another on the far side, near the kitchen. He was also wrangling Jacks, who believed he was helping, while Mother made dinner in the kitchen beyond.

  “Now, Jacks,” Father said, “we cannot allow these upstarts to vanquish us yet again. We must build for strength as well as beauty, son.”

  The game consisted of building opposing towers and then, when each side was finished, hurling a small ball back and forth to test which tower could withstand the battery longer.

  “It’s your turn to design the tower,” Picket said, “so what are we building?”

  “As tall as we can make it,” she answered.

  “But that won’t last long in the battle.”

  “True,” she mused, “but when it falls, it will be spectacular!”

  He smiled, nodded, and set to work.

  Heather watched Picket as he laid the blocks in succession. She smiled. He looked young and had no scars from battle. His eyes were innocent pools, as yet unclouded by the darker parts that would soon move in through hardships.

  This very game had happened, and she remem
bered it well. She seemed to be the only one with awareness of what was to come, of how soon their parting would be.

  “Are you going to help?” Picket asked, gazing up at her. She looked into his eyes once more, and they began to change, to lose their innocence and deepen with the pain of what was to come. With knowing. “We should enjoy this while we can, Heather.”

  She nodded gravely and set to work alongside him. They built their tower with a tall, fragile foundation, but the top rose higher than any they had made before. It was lovely, and they both smiled, even while knowing it would not last. Perhaps because it would not last.

  Heather smiled at Picket, and he smiled back, eyes damp and with the hint of a wince at their edges. They held hands and looked across to where Father finished his tower, half of it hideous where Jacks had contributed. Mother sang softly in the kitchen just behind them.

  “The skies once so blue and beautiful,

  Are littered with crass, cruel foes.

  Their bleak, black wings beat a dreadful beat,

  Over sorrowful songs of woes.

  “Songs of suffering and cruel murders,

  All lament and never a voice,

  Raised in grateful gladness to the heights,

  Never reason to rejoice.

  “But,

  It will not be so in the Mended Wood,

  We’ll be free and glad again.

  It will not be so in the Mended Wood,

  When the heir of Jupiter reigns.”

  Picket squeezed Heather’s hand, and they exchanged a significant glance. Mother hummed on, the tune becoming a backdrop as she disappeared from Heather’s view.

  “Jacks, no!” Father scolded, dragging away his youngest son, who was carrying blocks taken from the base of their tower. “You’re unsettling the foundations!”

  She came suddenly awake, gasping hoarsely for breath. Dragging in thin measures of air, she sat up, struggling to breathe. Her throat convulsed and a violent spell of coughing ensued that set her writhing in breathless agony for several minutes, sapping the last of her strength.

  Finally, eyes streaming and unsteady breath coming in halted, wheezing intervals, she settled on her side and stopped coughing. After a few minutes, she opened her eyes, hoping to gaze on the one she loved, perhaps for the last time.

  Smalls was gone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  DEEPENING DARKNESS

  Heather tried to scream. A strangled gargle was all that emerged, and she groaned, eyes bulging and wound bleeding freely, as she twisted and tried to rise.

  She strained, and an avalanche of pain came as she somehow struggled to her knees. Agony screamed inside her, making everything around her fade into distant rumor. But even there, on the edge of her perception, she heard the tumble and clatter of rock on rock, and a distant part of her mind wondered at it.

  Bringing one unsteady knee high, she placed her foot painfully and breathed deeply, trying to find an elusive balance. In a desperate effort, she heaved up, aiming to stand on her own two feet again.

  Heather pitched sideways and fell like a plank, rebounded off the mossy stone, and settled into a limp oblivion.

  * * *

  Darkness, and more darkness. A hazy daze. An eerie lightness of heart. Dreamlike ease. Deep, deep darkness. She tried to open her eyes. A voice, slick as the wet stones on the cavern floor, spoke into the gloom.

  “Have you passed over, little doe?”

  I think I have. She tried to respond aloud, but nothing would come out. Nothing seemed to work right.

  “For generations he has waited for the promised conference,” she heard.

  What have you done with his body?

  “It was promised, you know. A rumor of ancestors, but he thought it only a story. Now, he is not so certain.”

  Don’t separate us.

  “Shall he tell you how long he has waited? There is little else to do. All his doing is done. What has he done these long years as keeper? He has kept alive the memory of his kind, as the treaty decrees. He has slept and wakened, eaten and drank, wandering these inescapable passages, tending the countless dormant issues of possibility. He has puzzled over the vault, spent countless hours in grim deliberation.”

  Heather was confused, but she heard these words on a plane where emotions seemed to be a distant memory. Nothing seemed to touch her heart, and her mind was but distantly interested. Still, she responded in her mind. I only want to see him again.

  “At last he has cracked it. At last he has the answer. He needed to go around, not through. Around, which meant digging.”

  Smalls. My dear Smalls. Now Heather’s mind, which had been like a long, dim hall, narrowed to the size of a slender tunnel, and meaning fled into the shadows beyond her fading light.

  “He is near … so very near …” the brittle voice intoned, but Heather lost the thread, and the tunnel of her understanding collapsed.

  Darkness. Deepening darkness. Nothing.

  * * *

  Then, an age later, something.

  “Heather,” a familiar voice whispered. “Drink this …”

  She drank, somehow getting the thin liquid to slide down her throat without coughing. Then she smiled, or dreamed of smiling, and the darkness came again.

  Once more, she drank on command, feeling easy in the presence of that beloved voice.

  “Heather, for me,” he said. “Drink again.”

  And later, hours or days later, once again, he spoke to her.

  “Drink again, Heather,” he said, and she did drink down the cool vegetable-flavored draft. She meant to fade again, as she had again and again, but he squeezed her hand. “Which one, Heather? Which one did you give me?” he asked. “The one in the small battered purse, or the larger one you have more of? Squeeze my hand if it’s the small vial in the old purse. Heather, please!”

  It was a happy dream, she believed, sleeping and sleeping and waking to drink, feeling every time better and better and—best of all—hearing his voice. She seemed almost able to open her eyes and see him once again, but she slept and slept again, waking only to drink at his command. He would have been a beautiful king, with kind authority and gentle power. That would be a dream pleasanter even than the one I’m in.

  Darkness. Unknowing. Happy absence of thought and will.

  “Again, my dear,” he whispered, what seemed a thousand years later. “Drink.”

  She did drink, eagerly now and with some energy.

  Heather began to suspect she was not dead, was not always dreaming. Threads of meaning wove together in her head, making patterns of purpose that began to make sense.

  “Are we alive?” she asked and was alarmed at the sound of her own voice.

  “Heather!” Smalls cried, coming close and touching her face. “Yes, we’re alive!”

  She felt joy welling up within her, a deep happiness rich with gratitude. And health—unexpected strength—coursing through her body. She opened her eyes.

  Smalls. Smalls was there, gazing down on her with a look of such love and relief that she couldn’t believe it was real. She blinked, breathed in deep, and then laughed. Laughed loud and full, without coughing or losing her breath.

  Smalls laughed too. They embraced, held each other, and wept for joy in the dim light of the island’s deep cavern.

  Heather couldn’t believe it was real, but it felt more real than anything she had ever experienced. She was alive. She was growing well again, somehow. And he, the hope of the cause and her own heart’s love. Here.

  Smalls was alive.

  Chapter Seventeen

  TRAPPED IN THE TOMB

  How?” Heather asked, breaking their embrace to gaze at him. His eyes were alive with light. How? How? How!

  “You,” Smalls answered. “You came here. You saved me.”

  “And then …”

  “And then I saved you.”

  “We were both abandoned and left for dead here,” she said, “but we’re alive … together. How are we alive,
Smalls?”

  “This, I think.” Smalls reached for her satchel and pulled out Aunt Jone’s battered old purse and drew out the small vial. “You squeezed my hand. I poured this in your mouth and in your wound.”

  “My wound!” she cried, reaching for the spot. It was cleaned, no doubt by Smalls, and it was whole. Somehow, whole. Healed! “Aunt Jone!”

  “Who?”

  “This is Aunt Jone’s tonic,” Heather said, beaming. “She said she had finally done it, and she had indeed! Oh, Smalls,” she wrapped him in another embrace, “we are truly healed and together!”

  “You didn’t know?” he asked. “I mean, about the tonic?”

  “No, no. I had no idea.” She stopped, then began to think back over her short time in the pit. “Wait, no. I did, in my last moments of consciousness, begin to see the possibility … I used it on a patient in Akolan—”

  “You went to Akolan?”

  “I did,” she said, taking his hands in hers. “Oh, there’s so much to tell. But I gave a dying buck some of this tonic and took a drop myself. My arm healed quickly and, the next day, I saw him on the battlefield as healthy as any buck half his age.”

  “Battlefield? In Akolan?” Smalls’ eyes went wide. “I need you to catch me up on what’s been happening. Is the flame of the cause still burning?”

  “I believe it is,” Heather answered, “even if it’s down to one last, trembling ember. It is burning still.”

  “Tell me everything, Heather,” he asked, passing her a bowl of the greenish water, “if you feel strong enough.”

  She took a long drink, savoring the satisfying taste. Breathing in deeply several times, she looked up. “I could talk for days. I will tell you how it is, as far as I know, and what hopes we still have for the mending.”

  She told him all of her adventures since she had seen him last, how Emma had led the resistance and how Picket had fought and flown on high. Of the princes Bleston and Kylen and the betrayals that shook them all at Rockback Valley. How the Terralains, led by Kylen and Tameth Seer, held the Whitson Stone and believed Kylen to be the rightful ruler and heir of all Natalia.