James White - The First Protector

In the short but seemingly endless time that followed, Declan thought that he suffered twice, once because he had already undergone this cutting and knew what to expect, and again when it was happening but taking much longer. But his muscles did not lock in a rigor as he held Ma'el's device steady above Sinead's gentle, precise hands, and his body remained still and unflinching without help from the ropes. Deliberately he did not look at her in case that would be a distraction and instead looked into the eyes of the watching Ma'el, which were so dark and deep that he did not know whether they were empty of feeling or showing too much of it for him to read. While he did not watch Sinead, he knew exactly what she was doing from moment to moment because she talked about it continuously in a quiet, competent voice.

He thought this might have been the teaching method of her dead healer father while demonstrating to his young apprentice daughter, and perhaps she was hoping that he might be watching her from somewhere and approving.

A triangular incision had been made and below it she had cut out a cone-shaped hollow that revealed and gave access to the abscess at its point. It was large, bulging, and covered by a thick skin that would have ruptured and spread poison throughout his body very soon. The skin was pierced, but only enough to introduce the cleaned quill that enabled most of the poison to be sucked out, then it was widened to remove the rest of it until her eye and Ma'el's device showed that no more remained. As much of the emptied abscess shell as it was safe to remove-part of it was adhering to the bowel wall-was cut away. For several moments the wound was allowed to bleed clean, then it was packed with herbs that would promote healing and a flamwort to reduce inflammation before she inserted a drain, closed up, and finally looked at his face.

"Declan," she said, "you are a strong, stubborn, and brave man. You did not move and neither did you cry out, even though I would have thought none the less of you if you had done both, many times. But now you can be at ease, it is over and it went well. Close your eyes and let sleep take you."

His eyes were already closing so that he felt only a tired surprise when she bent forward and touched her lips lightly to his forehead.

It took many weeks before a steadily increasing appetite caused the thin, knobbled sticks that were his arms and legs to thicken again with firm, healthy flesh and muscle. Gradually he became able to walk unaided about the ravine and even climb its rocky walls and, best of all, to splash daily in the pool. When he watched her it was evident that Sinead, too, enjoyed using the pool, but he doubted that she derived as much pleasure from watching him, and there was some invisible and unspoken constraint that kept them from swimming in it together. Their words to each other were more polite than they had ever been, but neither of them seemed to say anything of importance and he could not find the words he wanted to speak. Without making any mention of the situation between his servants, Ma'el said that he was pleased that Declan was returning to full health, and the hints that he dropped about them soon continuing their journey to Cathay became less gentle with each passing day.

At night Sinead continued her recent habit of leaving the tent's dividing curtain open but only by enough, she said, for her to know at once if he was having a feverish relapse. Declan felt so well that he did not think that would happen and he could not understand why she did not think so, too. Yet every night when his eyes were closed and he was pretending to sleep, he could feel her eyes watching him until he opened his whereupon she would close hers. It was like some stupid, childish game that increasingly angered and disturbed him until one night he could stand it no longer.

"Sinead," he said quietly, raising himself onto one elbow, "I know you are not asleep."

"I'm not," she agreed. "Have you a fever, a chill? What ails you?"

"I have no fever," he said, "nor am I cold. But I would like your body warm beside me again."

She sighed and seemed to pull herself more tightly into her burnoose as she said, "I have seen the way you look at me, not only when I'm bathing, and knew that soon you would ask that of me." She regarded him in silence for what seemed like a long time, then said, "The answer is no."

"1 do not like or want that answer," Declan said. He took a deep breath and went on, "Perhaps my manners are un-subtle and my words too direct. But even though they feel strange to me, my feelings for you are true and strong, stronger than any that I have ever known in my past violent and unruly life, and much too strong for me to want to risk hiding them behind pretty and, you might think, dishonest words meant only to sway you to my will. That is what I want to do, but there is much more that I want to do."

She looked at him, her expression serious but not angry, and did not speak.

"You are a woman and a gifted healer," he went on, speaking slowly and clearly as if he was instructing a child. "You are a woman who is graceful, comely of face, and with the beauty of form and person that all men desire but so few live to attain. You are a woman well taught in the healing arts in spite of your tender years, who is soft and gentle when gentleness is needed, and firm and direct in your encouragement when it is not. You are a woman with a lively wit and a mind that can accept, and even use, strange and fearful wonders that would drive another into gibbering madness. You are a

…"

A small hand appeared from her burnoose, palm held outward. There was an impatient edge to her tone as she said, "A woman. If I had not already known that I would of a certainty know it by now. Please, is there a point to these endless statements of fact that you are trying to make? And if your next weighty pronouncement is to be that you are a man, I know that, too."

"I am a man," he went on doggedly, "who has traveled with you and shared many strange and dangerous adventures with you over the course of half a year. When a man and woman are forced to be in each other's company for a lengthy period, I have been told, they grow either to hate or to love each other very much, and we have…"

"Who told you this," she broke in, "your wise old father?"

"My father did not ever speak to me about such matters," he replied. "It was Brian who told me during the voyage to Alexandria, while we were sharing a night watch and he had grown tired of asking me about Ma'el's secrets and was being serious and philosophical rather than amusing. He also said that when women had the choice they rarely chose as their intended mates men who were charming or skilled with words. Instead they sought out husbands who would be strong and constant and capable of providing for and defending the home they would build and the children they would beget, rather than some charming weakling with winning ways and an endless store of pretty compliments.

"But 1 was saying," he went on, "that we began by hating each other from the first moment we met, until in time the hatred faded and, on my part at least, has changed to love. It is a love that disturbs and delights my sleep and, when I awaken unfulfilled, it puts an ache in my chest and a hunger in me that no herbs or food will ease, and whenever I look at you it makes the muscles of my hands and arms cramp with the effort of not reaching out to grasp you and hold your lovely body close and… We have been near to each other and yet apart for a long time. On the ship when we worked on the leg of Tomas, and at other times, I thought that your hatred of me and what I am was fading, and surely your treatment of my wounds was not the act of a person who hated me. Have you none of these softer feelings for me, no smallest spark that with time and patience and continued pleading might be made to burn as fiercely as the fire that rages in me for you?"