Terry Brooks - The Darkling Child

Only to find him gone.

He wheeled about instantly, searching through the haze of ash and debris. No, h e told himself in frenzied disbelief. He can’t have escaped! I can’t have let that happen! H e swept aside curtains of smoke with his sword and pushed farther out onto the bluff. Then he slowed in dismay. All around him, human torches were collapsing into piles of charred flesh and bones. He covered his nose and mouth with his hand. The stench was horrific; he was standing in a slaughterhouse.

In the end he was forced to accept that he was standing there alone.

Sick at heart and fearing the worst, he hurried back to where Avelene lay sprawled on the ground. He knelt beside her, bending close, trying not to look at the ruin of her chest, trying not to see what was unavoidable. He saw her eyes follow his and heard the rough whisper of her voice.

“Should have … listened to you.”

“I’m getting you off this bluff and down into the city,” he said quickly, reaching down and lifting her into his arms, hearing her gasp with pain as he did so. “We’ll find a healer for you.”

“No,” she whispered, her mouth close to his ear as he cradled her head against his shoulder, moving as quickly as he could toward the road leading down. “My … fault. Took my eyes off …”

She said something more, but he couldn’t understand her. He was almost running now, ignoring the weight in his arms, putting aside all thoughts for himself. The soldiers who had survived the carnage on the bluff had disappeared. There was no one to stop him.

“Avelene?” he whispered. “Stay with me.”

She might have responded. He couldn’t be sure. He thought she was still breathing. He could feel her breath against his cheek.

And then he couldn’t, and by the time he had reached the base of the bluff she was gone.

MONTHS PASSED. SUMMER DRIFTED INTO AUTUMN, AND THE weather turned cold more quickly than was normal, the year’s end still weeks away when the skies darkened and the first snows fell. There were yet flowers in many parts of the Four Lands, and they were hard–pressed to survive the heavy white coating that layered them, though some managed to struggle on.

In the Westland, deep within the Sarandanon, the farms that dotted the Elven breadbasket that stretched from the Rill Song west to the foothills of the Breakline were closing up shop for the year. Crops were in, fields were turned over to wait for the next planting, animals brought in, and equipment stowed. Families began planning visits to friends and relatives while the weather would still allow for it, hasty outings organized and carried out, one eye on the horizon all the while.

For those who had been putting off visits to the healer in the tiny hamlet of Backing Fell, a fresh urgency surfaced. Their medical needs had not seemed particularly pressing before now, being mostly of the nagging sort, and thoughts of doing anything about them had been pushed to the side. But with that first snow a fresh attitude surfaced, and most chose to act while they could to prevent their various conditions and symptoms from blossoming into larger problems when the snows would prove too difficult an obstacle to overcome and winter might tie them down on their homesteads until spring.

Besides, they genuinely liked the young doctor and his wife, even if they weren’t Elves, and barely grown at that, so young they might have been the children of their patients. In most situations, the healer might have been dismissed as not yet ready to carry out the demands of his profession, still in need of further education. What could a Southlander know of healing and Elves, after all? But these suspicions were abandoned almost at once. After the first few brave souls visited and returned with stories of his gentleness and skillful ways, others quickly took advantage to make their visits, too, and the doubts disappeared.

It was rare to have a healer in such a small community, in any case. There had been none at all for so long. But the boy healer seemed not to care about the size of the community or the number of patients it provided for his practice. He seemed disinterested in larger cities and more populous regions. This was where he belonged, he insisted when asked about his choice. This was where he felt most at home.

And that young wife! Now, there was a catch. So lovely, like a china doll, her features perfect, her skin so pale and unblemished, her smile warm and she so willing to share it with everyone. She aided him in his practice, and then took time to bake breads and churn cream and knit scarves and bonnets for children and old people–all of it done without charge. She would go out in all kinds of weather to sit with the sick and injured. She would deliver medicines rather than have those that needed them make the trip into where her husband did his work.

They were a welcome addition to this farming community, to this scattering of families and neighbors, to the lives of the people of this vast and empty cropland where helping hands were often the lifeblood needed for survival. This young couple understood. Ask anyone, and they would tell you so.

Two days after the first snowfall, the initial white covering melted enough to allow for easy passage by foot or wagon or on horseback, the healing center was packed with fresh patients anticipating more bad weather all too soon. The young healer was working his way through the complaints and ailments of his patients with good humor and steady hands. Their problems were never challenging in ways he could not fathom or for which he could not find a reasonable solution. He was good at his craft, though the fact that he had perfected it over such a short period of time was something he was careful to keep to himself.

He worked steadily so that he could satisfy all of his patients’ needs by day’s end and had just finished servicing the last and when the door opened and a tall Highlander dressed all in black walked through.

For a second, the young healer did not recognize him. But when he did, he froze where he was, gone cold all through. “How did you find me?”

Paxon Leah shrugged. “It was convincing myself it was worth the effort that took time.”

Reyn Frosch moved over and sat down heavily on one of the waiting chairs, clearly shaken. “Is Arcannen still alive?”

Paxon took a seat across from him. “So far as I know. He disappeared again after he finished destroying the Red Slash.”

The boy immediately looked uncomfortable. “I don’t use magic like that anymore. I never will again. So if you’ve come to me about that …”

“No, I’ve not come about that.”

“What, then? What do you want with me?”

Paxon shrugged. His eyes were tired and his face worn. All the life felt drained out of him. “The woman I was with that last night on the bluff? The Druid? She died there. Arcannen killed her. I was supposed to protect her, and I couldn’t manage it. I was the Ard Rhys’s Blade, and I couldn’t save her. At the time, I thought you and Lariana were dead, too. But something about the way it happened bothered me. To satisfy my curiosity I went back to the bluff to look for your bodies, and there was no sign of them. There should have been something, but there wasn’t.”

Reyn clasped his hands in front of him. “So you got permission from the Druids to come looking for us?”

“You don’t understand. I didn’t do this for the Druids. I did this for myself. I wanted to believe that something good had come out of that night. That the terrible destruction I witnessed had a happy ending for someone. It didn’t for Avelene, and it didn’t for me. It didn’t for those men and women of the Red Slash or for Usurient, either.”